Short and sweet victory

SWAN Hill trainer Jane Duncan’s Short And Stout – also known as Teapot around her stables – has showed her maiden win on her home track on October 31, when she demolished a small field by three lengths, was just the beginning.

From seven career starts, Short And Stout has three thirds, two seconds and now two wins.

With Madison Lloyd back in the saddle at Bendigo on Tuesday, the plucky and very lightly raced five-year-old didn’t just hang on to win the $27,000 Bendigo Plant Hire Handicap over 1000m.

She was overtaken and had to fight back hard to win by a lip.

The win took away the breath of her trainer, who admitted that once her new star had fallen a short half-head off the lead, she thought that would be the end of it.

“I thought ‘oh, no, they’ve gone straight past her’ and she’s probably never really had to stick that hard and had to find, so it was really good to see her find today,” Duncan said.

“She can get a little bit wayward every now and again, but hopefully, since we have had the blinkers on, she has been a lot better.

“They’re just to make her concentrate, because she has always had the speed, they just make her go straight.”

Duncan conceded the trip and the win had not gone as smoothly as possible.

She said when they were tying up Short And Stout in her stall, and it was time to move stablemate The Stock Route to its own stall, things unravelled very quickly.

“She bowled Mum (Fiona Matheson) over in the tie-ups, and she hurt her elbow, so I am glad she won, that will at least make Mum happier,” Duncan said.

“It wasn’t until I took the other horse away that she got all upset.”

Lloyd was all smiles after bringing Short And Stout back to scale, and said she couldn’t believe the improvement from the horse’s last start.

“She actually went as straight as a die today,” Lloyd said.

“I wasn’t sure if her head was big enough, she’s only a little thing, but I knew she was right in at the finish.

“Today she proved how tough she’s going to be, usually when horses come up to her outside, she will try and run away from them, sometimes even hit the inside rail, but today she actually fought back, which really, really surprised me.

“But it also shows she’s still improving with good rides and better weather, and I look forward to riding her again.”

Duncan, making the most of her post-race appearance on national TV, then sent a very public happy birthday to her husband Stuart.