Just A Dash For Old Champ But Big Day Out In The City Is Off This Year
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday October 4, 2007
THE 1981 Melbourne Cup winner Just A Dash spends 364 days a year looking after yearlings at Willowdene Farm, near Dapto. On the other day, he gets to go to Melbourne to parade down Swanston Street on Cup eve with all the other former winners.
But he won't get his big day out this year because of the equine influenza-related ban on horse movement."He is a very calm horse and has a calming effect on the younger horses," Willowdene master Stephen Hill said. "That's his job around here, and then every year he goes down to Melbourne for the parade."Of course, the travelling ban applies to all past winners north of the Murray River. "It's very unlikely he will be allowed to get down here," Racing Victoria chief executive Stephen Allanson said."Our first priority is to get [fancied interstate performers] Leica Falcon, Natural Destiny and Takeover Target here to race and I can't see how we are going to do that at the moment. We have to put quarantine protocols in place to get the horses from NSW down here and that still has not happened. I can't see Just A Dash or any other horse getting down here."Hill had received permission to get Just A Dash vaccinated at the weekend in the hope of travelling to Melbourne, but even more so because he feared for the old fella. "If he got [EI] and died I don't think could have lived with myself, so I made sure he was inoculated," Hill said."He has been here for 20-odd years and he is like one of the family. We feed him twice a day and just love him."
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald