More Other Sports Stories

How does that make sense? "More other sports stories."

I asked myself just that when I was checking up on who won the Melbourne Cup because Tim said I should do a post on it, being the horse girl that I am.

This is a two pronged post - the first prong will inform you of who won the Melbourne Cup which you probably already know by now if you care and exactly why I don't particularly care. The second prong will attack the Xtra news section with all its prong-like goodness on how they come up with such a sad expression as "More other sports stories."

The winner of the Melbourne Cup was a Japanese horse named 'Delta Blues.' I have no idea if the horse was bred in Japan or is merely Japanese owned, but it seems to have done a very good job. See, I don't even know if it's a mare or gelding, so for now it can remain "it."

The second place went to another Japanese horse.

While I will admit that I am a "horse girl" as I was surrounded by various horses and ponies from a fairly young age, I have to point out the difference between the sort of riding I did and racing.

Racing is in a league of its own with money, jockeys doing crazy things to keep themselves light enough, drugging horses and did I mention money?

I'm not saying that the kind of riding I did (mainly dressage) is any less worth than racing. It's just that what I suppose we can call "equestrian" as opposed to racing just doesn't involve such a large turnover of money and it isn't exactly a quick way to become rich.

I rather doubt that it is done for the glory because it isn't a very glamorous job to work with horses. Early starts, low pay, physically demanding etc etc. But when you do get to the top it is very cool.

So I'm not really qualified to tell you anything about the Melbourne Cup because you could probably learn more about it from a small baked potato.

Now - my beef with Xtra. When I went to look at the sports section to find out who had won the Cup so I could pass the news on to you, dear readers, I noticed that rather interesting sub-heading at the foot of the page: "More Other Sports Stories."

At first I supposed that Xtra had made a grammatical error. Surely "Other Sports Stories" would have been sufficient. But no, they had added the "more." I pondered this for a few seconds and then realised that they were referring to "other sports." As in sports that did not fit into their stupid little categories of Rugby, League, Netball, Cricket, Soccer and Tennis.

It makes any sport that isn't rugby, league, netball, cricket, soccer or tennis have to go into a communal sports bin of news. I'm just peeved that cycling and multisport don't have their own sections.

Alright, that was your sports for this evening, I'm Susie Johnson, goodnight. Grrrrrr.