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Jan 8, 2025 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
Less than 18 months into her riding career, Mollie Fitzgerald leads the NSW jockeys’ premiership. Matt Stewart caught up with the latest rising female star in Australia’s jockey ranks. From his vantage point in South Australia, where two super-fit, super-skilled, super-confident women have surged to the top of the riding ranks, Dean Pettit has seen a girl in the NSW Northern Rivers who is about to “explode”.
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Dec 5, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
One day at Sha Tin, they’ll throw a big farewell party for Romantic Warrior. Sunday will essentially be that when Romantic Warrior contests the Hong Kong International Cup, a race he has won for the past two years. Hong Kong racing has experienced an extended honeymoon; two once-in-a-lifetime horses in the same imperious era.
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Nov 28, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
With Anthony and Sam Freedman having followed in the footsteps of Mick Price and Michael Kent Jr and taken out a satellite operation in Sydney, Matt Stewart examines the motivations behind the shift from state to national operations. Each to their own in the world of the satellite stable but it doesn’t sit right for Anthony and Sam Freedman to stay put and wave off their horses into the sunset. They are paid to train them, not dispatch them to far-flung employees working off emailed worksheets.
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Nov 25, 2024 | 
frontporchrepublic.com | Matt Stewart
CALDWELL, ID. The 2024 presidential election was at least in part a rebuke of the Very Online Left (VOL), a term that, I humbly submit, is a better description of our current Left than either progressive or liberal. Progressive and liberal are real words with histories, as are the words conservative and libertarian. VOL is a properly ugly term for a movement that does not deserve much better.
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Nov 21, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
Te Akau has already made a major mark on Australian racing in the 18 months since setting up base at Cranbourne. But David Ellis’ Australian plan is far from realised, writes Matt Stewart. It was lunchtime on June 20, 2023 and Ben Gleeson had sweaty palms as he sat at a table for two at France-Soir, a swanky restaurant in Toorak Road. For the 29-year-old, this might prove the lunch of a lifetime. Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup.
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Nov 17, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
John Kanga went from board rebel to Melbourne Racing Club chairman in six weeks. The charismatic businessman tells Matt Stewart that having been an accidental hero to a revolution, he has a clear vision for what the club needs to do. The storm that engulfed the Melbourne Racing Club has now passed. The debris has been cleared and rebuilding has begun.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
Before Tony Ottobre, there was Dick Monaghan. Or, as Michael Lynch wrote in The Age in 1991, “I’ll Do It My Way” Monaghan. Trainer licences seemed easy to come by in Queensland in the early 1990s, when Monaghan, a Gold Coast builder and horse owner, decided he’d train Stylish Century better than Noel Doyle, Bart Cummings, Bill Mitchell, Ron Gill and Jeff McCarter.
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Oct 30, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
When Bruce McAvaney was a kid, the Melbourne Cup meant the world because the world, at least to an 11-year-old in Adelaide, stopped in its tracks for it. Classrooms took time out, Catholic priests threw Cup tips into Sunday sermons, taxi drivers were immersed in it, families and neighbours jostled for lounge room vantage points as 3pm drew close, Dad had all the tickets after queuing at the TAB, and Mum, who was best with scissors, cut up the sweep from the paper.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
In less than 10 years, Moonee Valley has gone from on the brink of closure to the verge of a spectacular transformation. Matt Stewart talks to CEO Michael Browell about the battles of the past and the expectations of a brave new future. It was three days before Christmas in 2015 and the Moonee Valley Racing Club was at war with Racing Victoria. At stake was both the club and the racecourse, a neat, intimate little circuit famous for its colosseum feel and its signature race, the W S Cox Plate.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
thestraight.com.au | Matt Stewart
Nick Hall’s view of this year's Caulfield Cup will differ from when he was twice the winning jockey. But as Matt Stewart finds out, Hall is a man who has always enjoyed a different perspective. The late Deane Lester said something curious in the mounting yard at Flemington the day Nicholas Hall won the Gilgai Stakes on All Silent in the spring of 2009. Lester had been a mentor and manager to many young jockeys but Greg Hall’s quiet and reflective son was simply different.
