Bruschetta and a horse called Tiberian

Tweet

Last Tuesday, we went to a Melbourne Cup luncheon in Fremantle, Western Australia. I chose Tiberian to win the Cup. Later I found out he had a very interesting history and was lucky to have been born at all. But to backtrack….. Once upon a time, in France, there was a thoroughbred called Tiberius Caesar. He was a failure as a racehorse, winning one race out of 49. Happily for him, he found a niche as a teaser and became known as ‘Caesar the Teaser’. A ‘teaser’ is a stallion used to ‘tease’ mares to see if they are ready to be mated. If a stallion approaches a mare before she is fully ready, he could easily get kicked and/or bitten by the mare so, to safeguard very expensive stallions a teaser does the initial checking to see if the mare is happy to cooperate. However the teaser never gets to actually mate with a mare. In 2011, at the end of the breeding season at Haras du Logis stud some three hours west of Paris, Caesar had been very conscientious in his profession and the staff, feeling sorry for him, allowed him to mate with a mare called Toamasina. The offspring was given the name Tiberian, the horse I chose to win the Cup. Tibernian has now won six of his 17 races. Unfortunately he didn’t manage to win the Melbourne Cup. And in another twist to the story, Caesar was the teaser for a stallion called Authorized, sire of Hartnell which ran third in the Melbourne Cup in 2016. Last Tuesday, Hartnell could only manage 20th place being well and truly beaten by Tiberian who was 7th past the post. We were at the lunch with good friends, one of whom turned 70 that day. The previous Sunday we shared in a celebration and one of the finger foods offered was the bruschetta pictured. Do you love bruschetta as much as I do?