13 July 2015
By Duane Ranger
Friday’s feature trot at Alexandra Park was tinged with sadness for owner/trainer Liza Milina.
Of course the 50-year-old was delighted with Moment Of Truth’s second consecutive win in a week, but at the same time she was distraught her rising 13-year-old had been claimed for $6,000 after the Hydroflow C3-C7 Handicap.
“He’s my boy. I hate the thought of him not coming home with me. We have been together for two years now and have built a close bond.
This is a bit hard to take at the moment. I never thought for a moment he wouldn’t be coming home with me,” said Milina.
Moment Of Truth was not only Milina’s first starter to the races but he also won that C1 and faster trot at Alexandra Park on November 7 last year.
The gutsy bay will now have his 13th owner in 10 seasons of racing after he beat (Regal Petite (Maurice McKendry) and Sunoflindenny (Mark Jones) by two half-necks.
It was his 25th victory in 157 lifetime starts, and it came just a week after he won C1 to C4 trot from 10m behind also at Alexandra Park.
This time Moment Of Truth was the only starter off the front row and was remarkably the seventh of nine, and paid more than $16 to win.
“I honestly didn’t think he could go back-to-back tonight. I’ll get him back. You wait and see. He’s such a wonderful friend. He’s mine,” the Kumeu trainer said.
Peter Ferguson had the Sundon gelding nicely situated behind Sunoflindenny for most of the 2700m stand and then in the home straight was simply too strong for his eight opponents.
The trotter who becomes a ‘teenager’ in less than three weeks stopped the clock in 3:30.5 (mile rate 2:05.4) with final 800m and 400m sprints of 58.8 and 30 even.
Seven days earlier he went even quicker 3:29.8 (mile rate 2:05 even) and came home in 59.5 and 30.6.
“Ever since I got Chocolate Brownie a couple of months ago he’s become a new horse. He just wants to race and only he will tell me when he wants to retire – and that doesn’t seem to be any day soon,” Milina said.
“My main aim now is to get him back,” she stressed. A feature story on Milina, the old boy Moment Of Truth, and his new found buddy – Chocolate Brownie will feature in the August edition of Harnessed.
The favourite Al Bundy sat parked and faded to finish a disappointing four-length seventh.
He was being driven by Zac Butcher for the first time, who was replacing his father David.
Last Tuesday the 50-year-old Waikato horseman was kicked in the chest while trying to catch a horse in his Cambridge yard.
Butcher spent most of last week in the high dependency unit at Waikato Hospital with a perforated bowel, a lacerated spleen, a damaged pancreas, and at broken ribs after Tuesday’s accident.
His wife Wanda said her husband couldn’t communicate because he had feeding tubes and drains attached to him making it difficult for him to talk with family let alone the media.
“The bowel is the biggest problem because it’s slow healing and the doctors say he’s looking at one or two months’ recovery time,” she said.
Last year Butcher was side-lined for nearly eight months after pulling his pectoral muscle off the bone in a training accident.
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