A bit about the site

02/05/2006 Author : Mark Bass Well we have come to the end of our second month and what a learning experience it has been. We seem to have ironed out the teething problems which we expected with the site and all seems to be running pretty smoothly now. I guess we must have done a few things right as the response up to now has been great. Our statistic department have informed us that in March we totaled 59 852 hits and in April we accumulated a whopping 92 500 hits!! with more than 15% of visitors spending more than 1 hour on the site. As you might have realized by now Monday is the day most of our articles are inserted and this shows by the statistics indicating Monday to be the busiest day by far. Thanks for the support folks.   Our tipping got off to cracking start in our first month with mike tipping home 5 out 7 pick sixes along with numerous Place Accumulators, Jackpots and a few well paying outsiders. From this month onwards we will be including a few extra categories to add to our tipping service, so if you are not already a member your first tip from Mike Bass Racing, is to join now. Click here to become a member.   Tammi Eastland, Mike Bass Racings new employee, is at the heart of the control room and I congratulate her for adapting so quickly to her new role. She has been a pleasure to work with. Some exiting times lie ahead for MBR.com as we have submitted our phase 2 of operations to our loyal Web designers - Flatspin Web Design. Look out for SMS tipping which will be arriving shortly as well as our Video clip of the week which will be posted on the front page of the web site for all to view .The clip’s will be a combination of interviews ,horses in training and racing from Kenilworth, almost like our own little TellyTrack. We will also be launching our Forum which will allow visitors to chat about various topics as well as a guest book for visitors to log in their views and comments. We look forward to the changes and will keep you posted on the progress and launch dates.   We have had various enquiries from Owners regarding Nominations and Weights and Draws. A quick reminder one can find these on the web site under the menu bar entitled “services”. Don’t forget you will find the Durban nominations here too. Scroll down for the particular meeting you are after. For a quick peak at the nom’s click here. There are still a couple of shares available in a few of our top Horses from the Equimark Sale so please click here to view purchase options.   It’s the “5 to follow competition” time now and thank you to those who have already entered. We have decided to postpone the competition for one week so the new date of commencement is Tuesday the 9th of May at 17.00pm. Names and selections will be posted and updated on the site. No late entries will be accepted so please get your entries in ASAP. Click here to enter.   As we all know the Durban season has arrived so here are a few dates to make a note of: Daily News 2000, Greyville, 03/06, Grade1 Woolavington Stakes, Greyville, 03/06, Grade 1 Mercury Sprint, Clairwood, 15/07, Grade1 Vodocom Durban July, Greyville, 01/07, Grade1 Champions Cup, Clairwood, 29/07, Grade1 Canon Gold Cup, Greyville, 06/08, Grade1 Sunday Tribune SA Guineas, Greyville, 06/05, Grade2  Well that’s all from the team at Mike Bass Racing, we hope you are enjoying the site. Please forward us any suggestions you may have to make your life a little easier or perhaps you have a comment or question to ask one of our team members, if so please click here.   Till next time, have a safe month and I’ll see you on the site.     Mark Bass

A few words from Candice

02/05/2006 Author : Candice Robinson It’s been a long tiring week at the National sales in Johannesburg but a rather rewarding one. We ended up buying some very nice horses and in total came home with 9 horses of which 2 were purchased on select night. The two on select night were lot 7, a Western Winter colt out of the champion sprinting filly Enchantress who we had in training, from Lammerskraal stud and lot 57 a Jetmaster colt out of the good race filly Shoot the Booze, from The Alchemy stud.   Our Jet Master colt - Air Combat . Other lots of interest were lot 171 a big, strong Jallad colt from Highlands stud and lot 479 a half brother to O Caesour, by sensational new sire Count Dubois, he is a lovely strong colt and looks like he will be fast.   The sale in general was of a very high standard with many horses fetching very high prices. It was very difficult to buy horses as horses that were of an average standard were fetching over 100k and therefore making it difficult to get good value for your money. I am sure most of the breeders will be more than thrilled with their overall prices. Hopefully the stakes will increase in the near future to substantiate the high prices paid. We had a good time up there this weekend, lots of walking, eating and drinking and late nights, so will need a day or two to recover. As my father says “A week in the army is a breeze compared to a week at National Sales”   Its  was great to see Dunford winning on Saturday. He certainly looks to be on track for the upcoming Natal season and defending his title in the July. West Side won a gutsy race from his second start for our new owners Mr N Petersen. Congratulations to them as this is their first horse and they were over the moon. That’s what makes racing as special as it is and I am sure they will share my sentiments.  Pocket Power and Count Saumarez kick off the winter series in Cape Town in the Winter Guineas on Sunday and Floatyourboat will also be running in the Natal Guineas this coming weekend so we have lots to look forward to.   Hope you are all enjoying the web site and gleening enough information from a tipping point of view and most importantly that our owners are finding the information on their horses informative. It has been a great learning curve for us over the past two months and any suggestions you might have to better the site please feel free to let us know.    Have a great month and hope to see you all at the Races!!!!