THE home team took the visitors apart at Swan Hill’s races on Tuesday.
With eight on the card, local trainers won five as Nyah West apprentice jockey Madison Lloyd landed a double of her own.
Leading trainers Nathan Hobson and Austy Coffey also had doubles, while Helen Burns stunned the field in the $27,000 BuzBiz.net.au Handicap over 1600m with her 30/1 shot Golwen, which paid a whopping $28.90 for the win.
Hobson kicked the day off with a back-to-back double, starting with a storming finish by Lloyd on Neo Del Toro in the $27,000 bet365 Top Tote Plus Plate (975m) and then continuing as veteran hoop Brad Rawiller managed his very green galloper Murralane over the line in the $27,000 Jarrod Arrentz Electrical Plate (1600m).
Hobson said Neo Del Toro attracted a bit of attention after the jump-outs following the most recent Swan Hill meeting.
“It’s not often something like that happens but everyone from the caller to the barrier boys did a great job with it,” he said.
“And there are more scheduled to be run after the races today.
“Madison (jockey Madison Lloyd) rode him for me in the jump-out and in his first time in for me he ran a second, and then had another run before we tipped him out again.
“He was probably a bit unlucky not to win his first one for me so we put the blinkers on him and it paid off today.”
Lloyd agreed Neo Del Toro “showed me a lot of style” when she rode him first up for Hobson in his last preparation.
“But today when that gap opened up for us I just knew he was going to rip straight through it after he had been so luckless in the first run,” she said.
“This horse is definitely showing a bit of promise but he is just taking a little bit longer to mature.
“He’s just a bit of a boofhead at the moment but my little sister rides him in track work and has done a marvellous job with him.”
In the Jarrod Arrentz Electrical Plate, Hobson described Murralane as “a work in progress, a big, raw duffer”.
“He was third up today and is still a pretty big, pretty green horse,” Hobson said.
“When Brad (jockey Brad Rawiller) rode him first up at Horsham the other weekend he over-raced, and the same thing happened with Madison (Lloyd) here at Swan Hill the other day.
“So I sort of left it all up to Brad and he rode the race a treat.
“There was a good tempo – that really helped today.
“We just need to find that happy medium with him.
“I bought him online for around $9000 as a yearling and he’s a big, lovely, scopey type and he looks like he’s going to get over ground – but I just don’t know, so we are thinking about dropping him back in distance.”
But the most excited person on the track had to be Helen Burns, who was juggling four horses, a work experience strapper and her shift at the hospital.
When Lloyd steered her ridiculously longshot Golwen down the middle of the deteriorating track (as the rain kept falling) after a very tough mile to snatch the win in the last stride, her smile lit up the surrounds.
But in the midst of her celebration, the popular trainer seemed more interested in thanking everyone else.
“Young Brodie Buying has been working with me in the school holidays and saying he has always wanted to lead a winner back to scale – and he has today,” Burns said.
“He’s a great kid and so is Maddie, and I have to also thank the owners, who have entrusted me with a few of their horses over the years.
“I also must thank all the people who muck in and help me with feeding and working the horses and always turn up.
“I didn’t expect this today, honestly, but this fellow has been running well – he just hasn’t had the luck.
“If you go back through his races you will see he’s been carted off the track or held up and he’s been beaten three to four lengths but he’s just been unlucky.
“I did say to Maddie we just need a little bit of luck because I’ve got him fit and ready and he’s going well so I can’t expect any more – he’s going brilliantly.”
Lloyd said Golwen gave her “a beautiful ride, very straightforward”.
“And he just bounced out of the gates, very quickly, and I let Wardy Boy cross me to give us some cover and then Golwen relaxed under me right through the middle stages,” she said.
“But when I pressed the button, I had plenty of horse there.
“I’ve known Helen, like, forever and she has always supported me throughout my whole career, even when I was a little girl riding her show ponies.”
Hobson opened the meeting with a double and Austy Coffey closed it with two of his own.
And the ride/win of the day was when Tahlia Hope took out the $27,000 The Bottle O Swan Hill (1200m) with an electrifying last – very much last – to first, Coffey’s reigning Swan Hill racehorse of the year, Sports Idol, having all but falled out of the starting barrier when they were let go.
“He sort of stumbled out of the barriers and ended up much further back than I would have liked,” Hope said in the understatement of the day.
“And the field went along at a good tempo.
“Before the race Austy told me he has been looking for a mile so I always knew he was going to be strong at the end.
“And in the end, it was just a matter of him getting there or not.
“First up he ran really well but we thought he might just have been a bit excited because of the day and on his home track so we weren’t too sure today what we were going to get with him.
“But it’s a really positive sign that we were able to get a win over 1200m with him.”
Coffey had no hesitation saying his horse “looked hopeless out the back early on but he let down really well”.
“He’s a lovely horse but up until recently he has just been a big foal,” he said.
“But now he has dropped the penny a bit.
“The owners will have a good time with him, I reckon.
“He’s just a little ripper.”
Then Coffey capped off the day for the locals when he lifted apprentice Sarah Field into the saddle on five-year-old mare Miss Cheviots.
Field went into the race with just four career victories but her approach was purely professional.
“I did ride her previous start and she was very good there, as Austy says, and she came here today a bit fitter and she settled a lot more and she was just too good,” Field said.
“She did such a good job.
“I was very confident and when I got to that other horse she did have a little bit of a think about it, but to her credit she is pretty tough and we won it.
“It was also my fifth win so I am now off the 4kg claim as well,” she said with a grin through the mud.
Coffey said he thought his mare would still be a runaway “but she got to the outside well – and her run the other day was a good one”.
“This wraps up a really good day for the locals as well,” he said.
“The bloke at the feedstore will be happy with us.
“After a day like we have had I reckon the track performing this well over all eight races is a credit to a fabulous track staff and track management, the whole lot of them.
“It’s a big job when you are bogged down to keep going, but they did.”
And so did Swan Hill’s racing fraternity – all the way to the finish line.
