10 August 2018 | Shane Yates
A winning treble at Wednesday night’s Launceston Pacing Club meeting has lifted Beauty Point reinsman Rohan Hillier within 11 wins of Todd Rattray at the top of the Drivers Premiership table with five meetings remaining in the 2017/18 season.
Hillier’s winning run started with his five-year gelding Im Compliant (pictured) making it six straight in Tasmania with another convincing victory in the Bevan Lees Butchery Pace over 2200 metres.
“We will take the win tonight but I thought he was a bit flat, he’s had a couple of tough runs lately but his class got him through,” said Rohan.
“We will pull some blood when we get home and see if that tells us anything, he may just need a week in the paddock to freshen him up a little.”
The John Castles-trained three-year-old gelding Flashy Ruler was rewarded for his recent consistent performances with a last-to-first victory.
Stablemate Keep Playing led to the home turn but Hillier wound up the flashy grey out wide on the track and he gunned them down in the home stretch to win impressively.
“We were further back than I had planned to be, but when I called on him out four and five wide at the 400-metre mark he responded like a good horse and had then covered on the home corner, I was very impressed with him he’ll win again on that run.”
The Kristy Grant-trained favourite Rollon Jack rounded out Rohan’s treble with a courageous run in the last race of the night digging deep over the concluding stages to score by 1.7-metres after looking beaten off on the home turn.
“He wanted to hang on the home corner and I thought the best he would do at that point would be finish third but once he balanced up in the straight he really knuckled down to the task and scored a gutsy win.”
Troy McDonald chimed in with a winning double for leading trainer Ben Yole, sneaking under the radar of punters with Black Ops leading all the way at double-figure odds and following up with the well-performed Gems completing a winning hat-trick.
Rohan Hadley topped the night off for Ben Yole steering home his third winner on the programme with Monarkmac scoring a convincing victory by eight-metres.
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