NZ HARNESS NEWS
Sarah Palin, the trotter that keeps on giving, added another success to the long list of thrills she has given her trainer Margo Nyhan at Waikouaiti on Monday.
The popular nine-year-old trotted down a heavily rain-affected track with the gusto of a horse half her age to register Nyhan’s first training treble.
She and her partner, driver Peter Davis, had won with My Eyre and The Jandal Machine earlier on the second day of Waikouaiti’s annual two-day meeting.
Sarah Palin helped Nyhan and Davis achieve the feat with just six weeks left in her racing career.
The mare is in foal to Bacardi Lindy and will soon be ruled ineligible to race.
Sarah Palin almost ruled herself ineligible to race before Monday’s event after suffering tying up problems following her run for third at Waikouaiti on Saturday.
“She tied up that badly on the first day she couldn’t walk – she could barely walk to the wash,’’ Davis said.
Tie up problems have plagued the popular mare throughout her career, but had not flared up recently.
Thankfully the problem did not seem to affect the horse after her victory on Monday.
Davis directed all three of his winning drives down the same inside lane of the Waikouaiti track.
After his first two winning drives he had no other plans but to get to the markers as soon as he could with Sarah Palin.
“The fence is the place to be today, it’s just better going right around the inside,” Davis said on Monday.
“She had to get down to the fence, that was the key.’’
“We thought she might have struggled to cross them from the nine-hole, but there were three scratchings, which gave her a chance.’’
Achieving her first three-peat was a case of completing unfinished business for Nyhan and Davis.
The pair were eyeing their treble at Waikouaiti in 2011 when they collected wins with Zealous Lady and Fly The Flag.
But the feat alluded them when things went awfully wrong for their main hope of the day, Sonnetsson.
Davis was tipped from his sulky soon after the start of the Waikouaiti Cup dashing their treble hopes.
Seven years on and the Waikouaiti Cup was run in similarly bizarre circumstances.
The race failed to attract enough nominations to run as it historically has, as a handicap pace.
Instead a field of trotters ploughed their way over 3200m on the puggy Waikouaiti track.
The race was won by veteran trotter Valmagne in a painfully-slow 4-44.6.
The pace was just fast enough for the horses to scare the hundreds of seagulls that congregated on the track during the event.
Though they did not fly away without leaving their mark on some of the drivers in the race.
- NZ Harness News
Approved By Dean Baring www.harnessbred.com
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