26 October 2017 | Duncan Dornauf
One of the biggest night’s of Tasmanian harness racing will be held at Luxbet Park in Hobart on Saturday evening when the Tasmanian Pacing Club stages the 2017 Yabby Dam Racing Australian Drivers Championship.
Twelve of the nation’s best drivers will do battle across the eight-race program that gets underway at 19:15.
Last week in Launceston there was a strong nine-event program where drivers Todd Rattray, John Walters and Jack Laugher all recorded multiple wins on the program.
The Stars
Todd and Gareth Rattray – warmed up for Saturday night’s Yabby Dam Racing Australian Drivers Championship program when they drove three of the nine races between them last Sunday. Todd trained and drove Devendra to a brilliant display in the free-for-all and backed it up in the following race with Zhukov Leis. Older brother Gareth demonstrated why he is one of the best drivers in the state with a masterful drive on the Ben Yole-trained Ready To Fire.
John Walters – was one of three drivers to register driving doubles on Sunday with wins aboard Hit The Lights and Tisu Toota.
Mark Geeves – only trains a small number of horses and has done a great job with his team, but he caused a knock out blow to punters when Hit The Lights scored at $40 on the tote.
Adrian Collins – well-judged drive on Courageous Katee to bring up the Courage Under Fire mare’s sixth career win.
Black Booker
Cyrilfromthepocket
Has been racing out of form in recent months but showed he may be working back to his best form after hitting the line well in the last race in Launceston on Sunday. Driven by the in-form Adrian Collins, Cyrilfromthepocket settled three back along the pegs and showed a good turn of foot to take ground off the leaders over the final 100 metres of the race and in doing so he recorded the quickest last quarter of the race outside the winner with 28.81 seconds.
Watch the replay here.
Calculated Sectional Standouts
Quickest last halves (800m) from last week’s action in Launceston on Sunday.
Fernco Bobby G 56.61, Dapper Dana 56.67, Devendra 56.80. Outside of the free-for-all; Jaccka Len 57.41, Jukebox Music 57.44 and Wrongly Accused 57.49.
View all Tasmanian sectional data here.
Trial File
Launceston Sunday
Christians Angel won Sunday night’s qualifying trial. The John Castles-trained five-year-old mare sat on the back of the leader Deecee Glennwood until driver Roan Hillier eased her out at the 450-metre mark in a mile rate of 2:03.5. Watch the trial win here.
Hobart Monday
Trial results were unavailable at the time of publication.
Week Ahead
All eyes of Harness Racing Fans across Australia will be on Luxbet Park Hobart on Saturday evening for the 2017 Yabby Dam Racing Australian Drivers Championship.
In race two talented four-year-old Jaks Teller will be lining up for his sixth career win at his seventh start. The Juanita McKenzie-trained pacer has drawn the second row with his other main danger and inform mare Courageous Katee who showed a very quick turn of foot in the home straight in Launceston last Sunday to win.
The fifth race on the program is a very strong C1 affair where the Todd Rattray trained duo Hafter and Striker are both out in search of a hat-trick of wins.
There looks to be a couple of short-priced favourites later in the program with Streitkid in race six who was an impressive winner on debut in Hobart last Sunday week and in the final race we see the return of Semowillrev who was ultra-impressive in winning a trial at Carrick Park last Monday week by 35 metres.
Tasracing.com.au will provide an extended live stream coverage of the race meeting with pre-race interviews, late mail and the latest Tasracing Official Price information from 15 minutes prior to each race. The service will also telecast post-race interviews with the winning connections.
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
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