IF Helen Burns had been asked to vote for which of her two horses would win the $20,000 Peter Walsh MP handicap over 1100m at the Kerang Cup meeting on Easter Saturday, she would have lost.
She had no hesitation in casting her vote for Rafha’s Choice, but while she was watching the nine-year-old gelding hit the wall and start going backwards, she almost forgot about her other runner, Pure Indulgence.
Just in time, she spotted Pure Indulgence screaming down the outside to snatch victory and be the only winner for a trainer from Swan Hill.
Her top-vote veteran faded to finish second last in the 10-horse field.
Fortunately Burns didn’t have to face a post-election inquiry – the winner and the also-ran are both owned by the same family.
“We’re still celebrating,” Burns admitted some hours after the race had been run.
“I think the owners (the Stojanovski family of Newcastle) were on the phone to me all the way home from Kerang to the stables in Swan Hill.
“I hadn’t really expected this result, I was only watching the other one, but when I did look around I could see the baldy face of Pure Indulgence coming down the outside and so I literally swapped horses in mid-straight and it paid off.”
Jockey Tianni Chapman judged her run on the soft 5 track to perfection, hitting full speed in the last 100m to blow right by the frontrunners in the shadow of the post.
Burns said the owners had just got home from a cruise to New Zealand and decided not to make the trip to Kerang, watching instead from the comfort of their NSW home.
That she won the cup with one of two horses in the same race was also new territory for the trainer.
She normally runs horses only for herself and a very tight circle of family and friends – primarily because she gets “too disappointed” for the owners when their horses don’t win.
The only reason she actually met the Newcastle couple was they were getting out of racing and she had approached them about buying or leasing one of their horses.
“The next thing I know they want to send me three horses because they thought I sounded a pretty honest person, and two weeks after talking the horses turned up,” Burns said.
“And that was only in October last year, so I have barely had them for six months.”
This was the seven-year-old mare’s first win with Burns, but she has been running into form in recent starts.
Rafha’s Choice has picked up three thirds and a second since joining the Swan Hill stable.
