LOCAL trainer Nathan Hobson will be having, certainly by his own standards, a “very quiet” bet365 Swan Hill Cup Carnival.
Only a handful of the almost 30 horses in his stable are nominated for a run in the 2023 event.
But he must be happy to see stable star Yulong Storm squeezing into today’s $150,000 Golden Topaz, one of the glamour events of the three-day carnival.
The seven-year-old gelding, with almost $250,000 in the bank, has been in red-hot form since coming back from a five-week freshener.
Unsure if he would get a start in the big race, Hobson gave him another run at Flemington on Saturday, with Nyah West jockey Madison Lloyd in the saddle, and his surge to the line missed by a long neck.
That gave him a slightly better result than the previous third at Flemington to back up a Ballarat win (with Swan Hill’s Shanae O’Meara aboard).
“It’s really great he has got a run in such a big event at home, because the quality of horses turning up at our carnival is getting very tough to compete with,” Hobson says.
“Having a look at the nominations it almost looks like a city meet, with all the big stables sending plenty of horses – that’s too tough a crowd for a stable like ours,” he says.
“It’s good for the carnival, and the town, as it will attract a lot of interest and a lot of people and better prizemoney, but I have opted to run my horses during the past two weeks at meetings where they are competitive.”
Hobson says he anticipated having a couple of runners today, and three on Sunday.
He also has two debut three-year-olds who will get starts – Murralane in a 1200m maiden and It’s Maui’s Gold in the 975m. Both put in strong jump-outs at Bendigo late last month.
