Right combination reaps big reward

Press, 1 May 1989, Page 35

Right combination reaps big reward

By

JEFF SCOTT

Yankee Loch’s similarities to a former top New Zealand square-gaiter, Stormy Morn, sparked a rewarding association for the Templeton trainer Jack Carmichael, and the Victorian reinsman Jim O’Sullivan in the Sky Channel InterDominion Trotters’ Championship in Melbourne recently.

The last time Carmichael was in Melbourne was in 1981 when he campaigned Kate’s Return at the Australasian Trotters’ Championship at Moonee Valley. The mare ran fourth in the 3300 m final to Stormy Morn, which was driven to victory by O’Sullivan.

With Carmichael forced to retire from race driving at the compulsory age of 65 last year, he had firm ideas on which Australian reinsman would best suit Yankee Loch.

“This is why I asked Jim,” said Carmichael after he arrived back at Templeton. “Yankee Loch is a bit like Stormy Morn in a way. They are both good front-runners and I told Jim to drive him just like Stormy Morn. He did a top job. “It is a good track but the turns are a bit flat and it is a front-runner’s track really. It helped him (Yankee Loch) but you have got to have conditions to suit sometime otherwise you wouldn’t win anything,” said Carmichael modestly. “Moonee Valley has to be seen to be believed. They have terrific amenities.” Carmichael spoke highly of the hospitality accorded New Zealanders (not only horsemen and owners) during the series by the Moonee Valley Harness Racing Club.

Another highlight for the successful Canterbury horseman was a night in his honour staged by the Victorian Square Trotters’ Association, staged at Ballarat. Carmichael was presented with an engraved trophy, bearing his name and the legend “Recognition to harness racing.” Fellow Canterbury trainer, Pat O’Reilly jun., was issued with strict instructions to get Carmichael to the function at all costs.

“They did it well,” said O’Reilly. "They read out a list of Jack’s achievements over the years at the presentation and it really moved me,” he said. Carmichael, who drove 791 winners in his career, was recording his 323rd training success in last Saturday’s sAust7s,ooo feature. He has also trained the winners of New Zealand’s two top trotting races, the Dominion Handicap, with Precocious in 1971, and the Rowe Cup, with outsider Astralight in 1965. His biggest pacing success has been in the 1972 New Zealand Cup as the trainer-driver of Globe Bay. Carmichael feels his latest trotting star could be slightly better than Precocious, which he also drove to win the 1973 Inter-Dominion Trotters’ Final in Sydney.

“Precocious was pretty good but Yankee Loch has gone a bit quicker,” he said.

This was the fifth time he had taken horses to Australia, beginning with Globe Bay at the 1973 Inter-Dominion in Sydney. Precocious was trained for the trotters’ series by Bob Mitchell that year.

Like Globe Bay three years earlier, Micron was unsuccessful in his turn at the 1976 Inter-Dominion Pacing Championship at Adelaide for Carmichael, while Kate’s Return at the 1981 Australasian Trotters’ Series and Glen Moira at the 1981 Inter-Dominion Pacing Series in Hobart, also unsuccessful, were earlier forays across the Tasman. Yankee Loch, which is owned by Sir Roy McKenzie’s daughter, Robyn, and her husband Keith Gibson of Wellington, will defend his Inter-Dominion title on home soil at Addington next year and also in New Zealand in 1991 at Alexandra Park. The Trotters’ Series is then scheduled to return to Moonee Valley the following year. A seven-year-old gelding by the unraced Speedy Crown stallion, Yankee Reb, and a half-brother to the pacing winners Scottish Loch (1:56.8), Cloud Over (1:58.6) and Roydon Loch (1:59.8), Yankee Loch’s dam Heatherloch won six races pacing. Heatherloch had been bought by Sir Roy from the Lochhead family of Ashburton, as an unraced three-year-old. Other good trotting winners in her pedigree were Supervise (10 wins including the 1959 New Zealand Trotting Free-For-All), Superwise (five wins), and Superway (five wins), the dam of Game Way, the runner-up to Stormy Morn in the 1981 Dominion Handicap and the sire of this season’s promising four-year-old, Swinging Billy. Yankee Loch failed to reach his reserve of $3OOO when offered at auction as a yearling and was originally leased to the Gibsons before being bought

outright. He won five races for Keith Gibson before being sent to Carmichael two years ago in the hope of making Tussle’s Addington Inter-Dominion Final, but although a winner at the meeting, he did not contest that series.

Two seasons on, Yankee Loch has matured into a much more reliable trotter, even though Carmichael says standing starts can still be tricky with the solidly built gelding. “He can still be a bit funny with stands. He doesn’t stand for long before he wants to move off,” he said. Jimmy Curtin, who handled Yankee Loch in his engagements at the Addington Easter carnival, will be reunited with the Inter-Dominion winner in his lead-up to the Rowe Cup meeting in a $12,000 standing start free-for-all at Addington this Saturday. Robin Butt, Yankee Loch’s regular driver for the early part of the season, had elected to continue driving another son of Yankee Reb, Midlands Del, trained by his father, Wes, when the pair clashed at Easter.

Flameaway, another open-class trotter in the Carmichael team, has been turned out until next term.

“She never seems as good after Christmas and goes better in the early part of the season,” said Carmichael of the New Zealand record holder for a mare over 2600 m (stand), with a 3:21.7 run at last year’s New Zealand. Cup meeting.

Gibson, meanwhile, has asked the Templeton trainer to try some others he owns but Carmichael has declined, wishing to cut his team back to the manageable size of eight horses.