HAWKESBURY trainers have fired an ominous warning to their rivals for next month’s PolyTrack Provincial Championships with local trainers producing an impressive tally of winners this year, with that number climbing by six over the past weekend.
With 37 races now won since January 1, the enviable momentum of Hawkesbury’s training forces has stretched across NSW for wins at the country, provincial and metropolitan level.
Following a treble at Orange on Saturday courtesy of Garry Frazer’s Go Benny, Wade Slinkard’s Vencedora and Garry White’s And So It Goes, Scott Singleton provided a breakthrough win for two-year-old Cyclonite at Newcastle.
Sunday saw the beginning of the Country Championships Qualifiers at Port Macquarie, and the well-travelled mare Enigami held off the late challengers in the final event of the day for training pair Tara and Philippe Vigouroux.
It was an “all-Hawkesbury” victory, with the mare being part-owned by Hawkesbury Race Club’s Chairman, Ken Quigley, and ridden by Hawkesbury-based apprentice Claire Nutman.
Not to be outdone, Jamie Thomsen secured the final race at Nowra with a horse raced by his father, the legendary trainer Bob Thomsen.
The four-year-old Shadow Flight shed his maiden tag at last, benefitting from a well-timed ride by Blake Spriggs to win his first race at start fourteen.
As eleven horses headed to Bathurst on Monday, a pair of Noel Mayfield-Smith’s horses to Wyong Tuesday, and Scott Singleton and Brad Widdup preparing five runners this afternoon at Canterbury Park, the Hawkesbury momentum will continue into the feature PolyTrack Provincial Championships meeting on home turf on March 10.
Showcasing the five Provincial clubs before the $500,000 final at Randwick on April 14, the PolyTrack Provincial Championships will be a hotly contested series in 2018 given the outstanding form of Hawkesbury’s trainers.
Greg Rudolph is the chief executive officer at Hawkesbury Race Club.
