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The Fine Cotton fiasco, Peter Hoysted & Pat Sheil

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non fiction

The Fine Cotton fiasco

Peter Hoysted & Pat Sheil

Brisbane, 1984. It all started with a simple plan to secretly swap a mediocre horse with a faster one, and rake in the cash with a few wellplaced bets. What could possibly go wrong? In The Fine Cotton Fiasco, Peter Hoysted and Pat Sheil brilliantly tell the scarcely believable tale of how through a combination of horrendous mismanagement, terrible judgement and comically bad luck the scheme gradually unravelled. How did a horse with white painted socks dripping onto the turf come to hold the hopes of punters across Australia and beyond? How was a supposedly secret plan so widely advertised that even the Queensland Commissioner of Police placed a bet? And how much of a coverup ensued in the aftermath of this absolute debacle? The story of Fine Cotton is the stuff of Australian legend. It features hardcore crims, likeable rogues and a supporting cast that ranged from the hapless to the hopeless with some entirely innocent bystanders thrown in for good measure. Not every crazy scheme cooked up by a couple of inmates in Boggo Road Gaol would culminate in a story that will be told across the nation for the next hundred years. But this one did

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