22 June 2020 | Duncan Dornauf for Tasracing
Auckland Reactor two-year-old filly Bridwood Bella raced right up to her good trial form with an impressive debut win in Launceston on Sunday night.
The Rohan Hadley trained pacer went into Sunday’s two-year-old maiden event winning both her trials including a win on 6 June in 1m 59.4s where she dashed home in a 57.2s last half mile.
Sunday night the filly impressed again on the stopwatch recording a slick mile rate 1m 57.4 for the 1680-metre trip, just 0.7s outside the two-year-old age record on the Launceston track which is held by Offthetopofmyhead who recorded 1m 56.7s in July 2016.
Sent out as the $1.60 favourite, driver Conor Crook took the pacer straight to the lead, and they were untroubled late to score by 17.5 metres over Longfellow with Indianna Sanz a further 5.3-metres away third.
Bridwood Bella was passed in for $8,000 at last year’s APG Sydney Yearling sale where after some negotiations she was purchased by Claire Hall, wife of greyhound racing identity Richard Hall.
“Richard came to me keen to buy one, and we went through all the photos of course, and we managed to spot that one, I think he was able to do some negotiating with the owners and he purchased her,” explained Bridport trainer Rohan Hadley after the win.
Even Hadley was a little surprised at the ease of last night’s victory.
“I don’t do a lot with her at home, I know she has the ability because she just feels good, but the time (last night) did surprise me, I have got to admit that, the trial where she broke two-minutes put the writing on the wall,” Hadley said.
Where to now for the pacer is the next question that Hadley and the connections will have to discuss in coming days, but the New South Wales Breeders Challenge could be an option.
“I will have to discuss that with the owner after tonight now, given the time she ran tonight does he have to look at the New South Wales Breeders Challenge, I guess that could be an option, but I don’t even know when they are on, I will leave that up to them” explained the winning trainer.
Hadley gave the reins to Beaconsfield based driver Conor Crook.
“I have another two-year-old that my wife owns so to keep it all separate I promised Conor the drive,” said Hadley who was full of praise for the winning drive.
Crook was the standout driver of the Launceston card winning another three races.
A peg hugging drive saw $21 chance Our Percius score by a narrow margin, it was the Deborah Williams-trained pacers 11th career victory.
Laid Back Kenny was the third winner for Crook on the card.
The pacer enjoyed a lovely run one-out and one-back to pull away late and score by 17.1 metres, the win continued the good run for Northdown trainer Geoff Smith.
Crook’s last win came in the final race of the night where Perfect Mach enjoyed a nice run off the speed to score at odds of $11.
Crook has now driven 38 winners for the season and sits in equal third spot on the state’s drivers title with Gareth Rattray.
Rohan Hillier heads the table with 40 wins over Mark Yole on 39.
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