Promising gelding LARADO ran a career peak at Eagle Farm on Saturday with Matt Hoysted’s 3YO looking destined for stakes races.
But first, Happy New Year and all the very best for 2026 with whatever your goals are over the next 11 months.
Certainly for LARADO this current prep is all about making sure his domestic rating is high enough for stakes racing during the rich winter in Brisbane. Then it’ll be a fruitful spell followed by what could be the defining campaign of his career.
In winning the 1000m BM70, the son of TORONADO smashed standard time by more than 6L and clocked the best last 800m and 600m of the day. Perhaps the most pleasing part was to see him progress off that first-up win. Last campaign he regressed 2nd-up, we now know that was an end of prep run rather than the start of a consistent pattern.
Elsewhere, the Joe Pride-trained 3yo DECLAN made his debut at Kembla on Wednesday. The 1000m Maiden was a tad above average and DECLAN clocked the 2nd fastest last 200m of the day when finishing 3rd. He was out in Lane 9 – the widest winner all day was Lane 8. No doubt he can pick a race like this off soon.
LITTLE COINTREAU is struggling for form in Melbourne. He over-raced when last at Pakenham on Thursday.
But the weekend was fruitful for Proven Thoroughbreds and the Hoysted stable with MELTDOWN winning 24 hours after LARADO got the money. MELTDOWN had no choice but to roll forward from his wide gate over 1400m at the Sunshine Coast. Our track intel said on pacers would have a slight advantage and that, coupled with a speed map suggesting minimal tempo, forced our hand. He was able to slot in nicely before taking out theBM58 closer in determined fashion.
Back to the new year. One of the most important lessons I learnt growing up was how to set goals. Life without goals is like driving a car with no destination planned.
Each year I start by working out if my long-term goals are still what they were 12 months earlier (mostly they are). My long term goals are usually looking around 5 years ahead.
Then I add a medium-term goal, which is something I can conquer that year. And finally, I make an immediate change (short-term goal). The latter often resembles a traditional New Years resolution.
I thought I’d share a journey I took just over 20 years ago. From it, I discovered the biggest mistake people make with resolutions is they make it about themselves.
In 2002 I made my New Years resolution to not litter once that whole year. At the time, I saw it as a challenge and had zero idea of where it would take me. I was smoking 2 to 3 times per day. This meant I had to put the fire out and find a bin for whatever was left of my disgusting habit.
Within 3 months, I was fully trained on how to manage my life without adding to the waste in our streets. I questioned mates who would simply throw their ciggie butt on the ground. Slowly but surely they caved and adopted my resolution. By the end of the year myself, and my four best mates, who I went to primary and high school with, were extraordinaryily conscious of not littering. Each of us pulling up family members or friends who fell short of expectations showing them how we eradicated littering by making small adjustments.
It was the best New Years resolution I’ve ever made and here’s why.
I learnt that positive contributions to your community puts you in a positive mindset, which positively impacts your goals. Each year from then on, I made resolutions of a similar nature and went from a bloke running nightclubs in the early 2000s to completing tertiary qualifications that permitted me to invest peoples money by 2009.
In 2010, I was working in Risk and Investments in the finance industry. In June that year, Tower Insurance asked me to speak at a conference to industry participants under 30 years of age about my journey discussing how the “no littering” resolution sparked change that ultimately led me to success. I was joined on stage by a psychologist, who supported my theory that inner change starts with giving not receiving. The speech was clear – make small, fundamental changes in your daily or weekly habits that benefits the broader community. In turn, you will notice your desire to be a better person results in exactly that – a better person. And better people are more likely to make positive changes in their own life without needing it to be a resolution they feel obligated to like a chore. The human brain is so powerful, mastering it can put you well ahead of the pack.
In the weeks and months following that speech, I received amazing emails from industry people.
On January 31, 2011 I realised my short and medium-term goals were making me a better person but I didn’t quite feel content. There was no direction for this ship. It was just one small improvement after another. I didn’t really like the finance game, it paid the bills but my true love was horse racing. It was time for a long-term plan. The goal was to become a horse racing commentator within 5 years.
So that day I enrolled myself to commence an accelerated Bachelor of Communications degree. The day I enrolled, I wrote an email to my favourite website – Racenet, saying I was a uni student looking for work experience. Two days later I got an email from a Clinton Payne saying “Meet me at Randwick on Thursday morning at 4.30am”. Clint, who still works at Racenet, offered me a full-time job within 7 weeks of that first piece of work experience. Starting wage was $40,000 for an apprentice. I had made $30,000 in December alone selling finance products. But the ship wasn’t going in the direction I wanted it to. So I quit finance, moved back home and worked full-time while doing a full-time accelerated uni degree. This combination meant I worked a 6.5 day week with only Sunday afternoons off. Two years later the degree was completed and I was on my way to being a racing pundit!
Nic Ashman is a form expert who has developed his own times rating system to assess races. He is the host of The Beaten Favourite podcast and appears on several other racing media outlets. For a more detailed summary of the past weekend’s racing, you can listen to ‘The Monday Podcast’ episode by The Beaten Favourite HERE.