N.Z. pacer expected to race again

Press, 5 December 1984, Page 53

N.Z. pacer expected to race again

NZPA staff correspondent Sydney The New Zealand pacer, Really Honkin, should be able to resume work in a couple of months, in spite of breaking a bone in his leg in the Australian Pacing Championship final on Friday evening. The tall, tough Southlander probably broke the pedal bone in his near-front leg going into the first turn in the 2700 m race, but he battled on for the entire journey before his driver, John Hay, pulled him up in the last lap and walked him over the line in tenth place. The four-year-old gelding is so tough that Hay said he wanted to keep on fighting all the way, and while the horse was racing roughly he refused to give the race away. The break is the fourth time Really Honkin has damaged a leg, and the third time the problem has

been a pedal bone. So far he has broken his off-front and off-hind pedal bones, and last year he broke his near-front pastern bone — the same leg he injured on Friday night. But the local trainer, John Ponsonby, with whom trainer Brian’O'Meara has left Really Honkin until the horse is fit enough to travel home, said yesterday that an equine expert who examined the horse during the week-end insisted that there was no reason why the Honkin Andy gelding should not race again. Professor David Hutchins, of Sydney University, who has a big reputation on this side of the Tasman for his work with horse injuries, xrayed and treated the horse during the week-end. Hutchins recommended special shoes for both front hooves and laser beam treatment to speed up the bone repair.

He told O’Meara that the horse could be fit to travel home in eight weeks, and would certainly be able to race again. Ponsonby said that once a pedal bone healed it was usually stronger at that point than before, but he said that since Really Honkin had shown a susceptibility for that sort of injury, it was something O'Meara would have to watch in future. “He could try and dodge hard tracks in future and he will probably pick softer tracks for him,” he said. “But lots of horses have broken pedal bones and come back winners. “While probably not many have broken as many as he (Really Honkin) has, a New South Wales horse Loyal Lord — a son of the New Zealander Lordship — broke three pedal bones and came back to win at Harold Park.”