THE jinxed Mt Wycheproof Cup – being raced with crowds this year for the first time since 2019 – has once again fallen at the final hurdle.
Abandoned in 2020 and 2022 because of rain, this was to be the comeback year.
The little town of barely 500 prepared to host four or five times that number for its famous one meeting of the year.
A capacity field had accepted for the $30,000 feature race of the day, including trainer Austy Coffey with his country cup star Bannerton.
The problem, according to jockeys, was a couple of wet patches on the track which they claimed were unsafe.
After taking just two horses there from Swan Hill, to get first and second in the $20,000 Hayden Kelly and Family Handicap over 1050m, fellow Swan Hill trainer Nathan Hobson was well on his way home when he heard the meeting had been abandoned – just before the cup.
Hobson’s two horses, winner Frowned and runner-up Toojay, are on a demanding schedule.
They were at Balranald last week where Frowned picked up another win and they’ll both be at Broken Hill next weekend, provided Frowned isn’t weighted out of its race.
Then, he says, they will be part of the team he is entering for Swan Hill on November 26.
“Frowned has only been with me since the start of the year after I picked him up for $3000 as a four-start maiden,” Hobson said.
Since then the four-year-old gelding has picked up more than $30,000 with two wins and four placings.
“He’s a bit of an immature horse to work with, making him a bit of a handful, but on the track he is a real goer, an honest horse who is always thereabouts.
“On Saturday, however, I confess I didn’t think he had any chance of winning; he was well back and in an awkward position (and appeared to be almost skittled coming out of the last turn).
“But once John (jockey John Keating) got him straightened up, the horse was terrific and he didn’t just win, he was going away from them, with Toojay hanging in there for second.”
With horses entered at two tracks today, Hobson won’t be able to be in two places at once.
But it will still be a toss-up whether he goes to Echuca with his entries there or joins former apprentice – and now senior rider – Madison Lloyd at Flemington for the $150,000 Paramount Handicap over 1400m, last on the Melbourne Cup day meeting.
Although at 200/1 neither trainer nor jockey expected anything miraculous, it was a case of playing the hand you have been dealt.
Hobson said Soldier of Love, which finished third in the Deniliquin Cup on October 21, is currently rated a BM81, so it has to go where it can get a run.
The trainer said he was also starting to look ahead to next year’s Swan Hill Carnival in June, when he planned to get veteran sprinter Yulong Storm back into the $150,000 Golden Topaz, which he won this year.
Although the gelding is now eight years old, with 40 starts and eight wins under his belt, Hobson is taking a very long approach to adding a second Topaz to his trophy shelf.
“He has spent the past month focused on the water walker, and now he is one week into six or so in the paddock before he gets back in the water and the walker for another month,” Hobson said.
“When that is finished he will go back into the stables (where Hobson currently has 20 horses in work) and start getting ready to race.
“Last year his prep was interrupted by a foot injury, so he had one start and was then out for five weeks before stringing together four very good rides going into the big one at the three-day carnival.”
With more than $350,000 in the bank, Yulong Storm has certainly paid his way across the years and consecutive Golden Topaz wins might just earn him some retirement time – although Hobson said the horse loathed going into the paddock.
