FROM THE SHERIFF'S DESK: BUFFERING DOES AUSTRALIA PROUD. MAKES HIS MARK ON THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

By John Schreck | Wednesday, March 30, 2016

John Schreck, a former Chief Steward in both Sydney and Hong Kong, has seen both the colourful and the dark sides of racing. His wealth of experience and his deep knowledge of racing matters across the board is unquestioned and the reputation he built as a racing ‘lawman’ remains firmly entrenched in racing’s history. Shreck’s personal blog, ‘From the Sheriff’s Desk', appears exclusively on HRO.

With Buffering’s win in Dubai, maybe the greater racing community will start to acknowledge what a really good racehorse he is.

Buffering has now made his mark on the international stage and if everything goes right for him he will be very competitive in Hong Kong ... and there is now a plan to go to England after that.

If he does all of that he will become a real superstar.

Quite simply, Buffering is a really, really good racehorse.

Constitution-wise he can stand the travelling, which I think a big plus with him. On top of that, he has the ability to beat the best.

He has kept producing quality performances but, even so, this latest effort has shown that he is a better horse than a lot of people thought.

The fact that Buffering’s form graph is still on an upward spiral at this stage of his career is an absolute credit the way the horse is being handled.

Good racehorse trainers, like Robert Heathcote ... and John Size and many others ... they are good racehorse trainers because they do keep their horses happy.

They play with the horses head as much as anything else and they work out how to keep the horse happy and I think that is the key to the longevity of Buffering.

Whatever they do with him they keep him very happy and Damian Browne, who rides him so well, clearly does the same when he is in the saddle.

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Buffering is going to be Queensland’s Horse of the Year for the fifth time in a row, which is a major achievement in itself, but he should be acknowledged much more outside Queensland as well.

In fact he should now be acknowledged not only nationally, but internationally, as a really good, sprinting racehorse.

Parochialism is a factor in general coverage, not just at home but in international stories, where writers and commentators generally favour their own.

While that is understandable, it is disappointing just the same because Buffering these days is flying the Australian flag internationally and doing it extraordinarily well.

As I said, if he goes to Hong Kong ... and then goes to England ... I don’t know what more could expect of any racehorse.

It is time for him to be roundly acknowledged as the superior racehorse that he is!

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It is always the horse that picks up the game and lifts it out of the sometimes less palatable coverage.

I have said many times that it is the horse that makes the sport and the horse is the most important part of the sport.

You think that’s sounds like an obvious point. Well, then you will be surprised how often people forget about the horse.

The basic key to the sport is the promotion of the horse but a lot of people don’t go to the races and sit in the grandstand and acknowledge the poor old horse enough.

That is until a horse like Buffering reminds us what the game is really all about.

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The Championships gets under way this weekend in Sydney.

I was at the races at Rosehill on Saturday and I got the impression that everybody is really looking forward to the Championships.

The Championships is part of life’s changing landscape which we all have to accept and I obviously wish Racing NSW well with the concept.

I do think they are faced with some difficulties in building the brand to where they hoped to take it originally because, I’m sorry to say, it will always be difficult to attract northern hemisphere horses to Australia in our autumn because they are coming out of the northern hemisphere winter.

That will always be difficult.

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On a personal level, and I acknowledge some of my views are entrenched in the past, I have been saddened by some of the changes that have been made to the racing schedule.

Without being critical of anybody at Racing NSW, to think that Randwick racecourse was closed down on Easter Saturday was, to me, a great shame.

Easter Saturday races were at Randwick for years and years and years. Everybody was in Sydney on Easter Saturday for the sales, the races.

Sadly, there was none of that at Randwick last Saturday.