Swinging Billy resting after surgery

Press, 30 August 1989, Page 45

Swinging Billy resting after surgery

By JEFF SCOTT Swinging Billy, one of Canterbury’s top four-year-old trotters last season, will not resume racing until February after undergoing minor surgery during the winter for a scar tissue problem in his near-front leg.

The Game Way gelding had been inconvenienced since the New Year but X-rays could not reveal the extent of the injury.

“It got to the point where we had to do something,” said trainer Grant Hunt yesterday. “He was okay racing in the straights but was having trouble on the bends. It took him a while to warm-up properly too,” he said.

“The veterinarians scraped the tissue down to the bone and said he needs three months completely out of work before we get him back in,”

he added. Swinging Billy is likely to return to serious work in November with Hunt aiming for a February return to the racetrack for the exciting young squaregaiter. “Going by the feature race calendar, there seem to be no open-class races for trotters in March as a lead-up to the Addington InterDominions, so he might not be ready for that

series in early April,” said Hunt. “It would be a concern for us because he will have had no hard racing, but he is still young for a trotter and there is always next year.” Swinging Billy, which holds the national three-year-old trotters’ mark for 3200 m at 4:17.5, has raced only 24 times for eight wins (two penaltyfree), eight placings and $36,720 in stakes.

Game Tempo, another five-year-olds son of the former Dominion Handicap runner-up, Game Way, in Hunt’s Weedons stable, has only just resumed training. “He has ability but racing under lights at the end of last season seemed to ruin his confidence,” said Hunt.

Game Tempo was a 4y 2 lengths maiden trotting winner at Rangiora in June from the stable.