Home test for Tactician
Gelding in search of overdue win
Loyal supporters will be hoping a return to home turf can provide the key to consistent Toowoomba five-year-old Tactician finally re-entering the winner’s stall at Clifford Park on Sunday.
Tactician lines up for trainer Steve Tregea and visiting jockey Anthony Allen in the Welcome Home Ben Saunders Class 4 Handicap (1100m).
The race is named in honour of former Toowoomba Turf Club employee and long-time Clifford Park racing identity Ben Saunders.
Saunders returns to Toowoomba this weekend after spending three months hospitalised in Brisbane recovering from a Clifford Park track-work fall which left him paralysed from the waist down.
Tactician scored three early career wins but has not won since scoring at Ipswich last April.
The Redoute’s Choice gelding has notched six placings in 10 subsequent
starts.
“In short he has been very disappointing,” Tregea said.
“He looks like, and is bred to be a group horse but he doesn’t race accordingly.
“On saying that he looks up to a race like this but I may yet run him at Doomben on Wednesday.”
Tregea and Allen also combine on Sunday with first-starter Lovebeat in the Art & Soul QTIS Two and Three-Year-Old Maiden Plate (1000m).
The three-year-old (Drumbeats-Loveshack) is a three-quarter brother to Tregea’s former top sprinter
Love Rocks.
Punters will face a testing form assignment when an open field lines up in Sunday’s Gainsborough Lodge Benchmark 70 Handicap (1625m).
The race includes Chief Joseph, Trump It and Haradify who filled the Benchmark 70 trifecta over 1650 metres at Clifford Park’s latest Sunday meeting on July 2.
Joining them is the Ben Currie-trained Real Mystique who returns to her home track after winning a Three-Year-Old Plate (1600m) at Callaghan Park.