Trident ‘three weeks off racing trim’

Press, 18 December 1985, Page 49

Trident ‘three weeks off racing trim’

By JEFF SCOTT

Trident, which was brought north by his Edendale trainer, Brian O’Meara, to be paraded at a pre-sales function in Christchurch yesterday, is about three weeks off racing trim. Given a brief respite after finishing fifth in the Fay Richwhite Sires Stakes Final on Show Day, O’Meara intends resuming with the Out to Win— Witchlight colt in the New Year as the countdown to when the derbies begin. He has no intentions of lining Trident up in the $9500 National Mutual Finance Champion Mobile Stakes for three-year-olds at Ashburton on Boxing Day. “This is the first time he’s been right for six months,” O’Meara said yesterday. “He was badly affected by a virus; we even brought him up here to be treated

by Bill Bishop. He had nodules right down his neck,” he said.

"It was a good run under the circumstances in the Sires Stakes Final; it was only the draw that beat him,” he added.

“It’s no excuses from now on,” a quietly confident O’Meara said of last season’s Cigna Insurance Sires Stakes Final and New Zealand Welcome Stakes winner.

O'Meara has also brought the star pacer, Really Honkin, and the maidens, Rich and Dark (Noodlum—Kai Tere colt) and El President (El Patron—Nyallo’s Dream colt), north for racing on the Canterbury Christmas circuit.

Really Honkin, a mile winner in Imin 58.5 s on the first night of the Cup meeting last month, is also likely to contest the $lO,OOO D.B.

Ashburton Cup on Boxing Day after racing at Rangiora on Saturday, while his connections would be keen to return to Australia for the rich J.P.S. Miracle Mile in Sydney in mid-January if he continues to please. Harold Park, Sydney, was the scene of Really Honkin’s fourth breakdown, cracking a pedal bone for the third time in the $BO,OOO final of the Australian Pacing Championships last December when a two-to-one favourite.

The Honkin Andy-Dran-rebbon gelding has come through his trial at Ashburton on Monday (when second to Winning Note) in fine fettle. “He wasn’t knocked round and John (Hay) said it was the best he has paced this time in,” O’Meara said.

El President needs four

scratchings before making his debut in the Ashley Meats Handicap at Rangiora on Saturday, while Rich and Dark has only raced once, breaking 100 m after the start in the Matinee Championship on the last night of the Cup meeting and copping a month’s spell from racing from the stipendiary stewards. Captain Cavalla, a gutsy fourth in the Fay Richwhite Sires Stakes Final on Show Day in Imin 57.85, was spelled after failing at Wyndham late last month.

A regular traveller on the main south road, O’Meara admits to being a bit weary of the extensive travelling he has to do from Southland to campaign horses in Canterbury, and for this reason, could make a permanent move north if the opportunity arises.