Ricky May knows exactly how good Lewy Risk is. The Mid Canterbury reinsman has driven him in the past, and although he wasn’t driving him at Rangiora on Sunday he believed he had the horse to down the first emergency for last year’s New Zealand Cup.
And that’s exactly what the brilliant ‘Methven Maestro’ did with the Greg and Nina trained Western Art in the feature pace at the Rangiora Harness Racing Club’s meeting.
They led after 200 metres and then handed up to the Lewy Risk at the bell. Then in the straight they pounced along the passing lane to beat the warm favourite by a head. Western Art was the $4.70 second favourite.
“That was a pretty good effort considering he was a three-win horse taking on the higher assessed pacers. Sure the track (slushy) might have suited him better than some, and we did get the run to suit, but to beat Lewy Risk is no mean feat.
“I’ve driven ‘Lewy’ before and he’s quite a nice pacer, but Greg and Nina had this fella spot on for Sunday’s race. The way he won I think there’s a few more left in him. He could make a very nice mid-graded pacer,” May said.
Western Art and Lewy Risk were one-and-three-quarter lengths ahead of third placed All Delight (Craig Thornley) in the $10,000 The Orange Agent Mobile 3yo –Of-The-Year C3 to C8 pace.
The Art Major gelding paced the 2000m mobile in 2:33.5 (mile rate 2:03.4) with final 800m and 400m sectionals of 58.8 and 28 even.
That was his second win from four starts at Rangiora. He’s also placed twice on the track, and three of his four wins have also been over Sunday’s distance.
Overall Western Art has now won four of his 15 starts. He’s also placed 6 times for $27,587 in stakes. The 5-year-old bay is owned by the GoHarness Double The Fun Syndicate. He was bred by A.J. Johnstone.
The win also provided May with his first victory of 2015-2016.
The slushy track prevented any horse recording a sub two-minute mile rate, but the David Moore trained Cee Ess Tee (race four) and the Geoff Dunn trained Zin Zan (race eight) did come home in 2:03 even – the quickest mile rate of the day.
Cee Ess Tee and Stephen McNally cleared maidens with final 61.7 and 30 flat sectionals. Zin Zan (Gerard O’Reilly) won his fifth career race coming home in came home in 59.7 and 28.5.
Dunn and O’Reilly also combined to win the feature trot with Princess Galleon, who notched up her second career win in the Stent Trotter-Of-The-Year stand for the C1 and faster squaregaiters.
Princess Galleon was the fourth favourite of 12 and paid $9.90 to win. She also ensured that Pick6 was not struck.
The required numbers were 5-8-2-1-7-4. Betty Golightly (Colin De Filippi) paying more than $30 to win the last leg didn’t help matters either.
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