Training treble for Nyhan
Sarah Palin, the trotter that keeps on giving, added another success to the long list of thrills she has given her trainer Margo Nyhan at Waikouaiti on Monday.
The popular nine-year-old trotted down a heavily rainaffected track with the gusto of a horse half her age to register Nyhan’s first training treble.
She and her partner, driver Peter Davis, had won with My Eyre and The Jandal Machine earlier on the second day of Waikouaiti’s annual two-day meeting.
Sarah Palin helped Nyhan and Davis achieve the feat with just six weeks left in her racing career. The mare is in foal to Bacardi Lindy and will soon be ruled ineligible to race.
Sarah Palin almost ruled herself ineligible to race before Monday’s event after suffering tying up problems following her run for third at Waikouaiti on Saturday.
‘‘She tied up that badly on the first day she couldn’t walk – she could barely walk to the wash,’’ Davis said.
Tie up problems have plagued the popular mare throughout her career, but had not flared up recently.
Davis directed all three of his winning drives down the same inside lane of the Waikouaiti track.
‘‘The fence is the place to be today, it’s just better going right around the inside,’’ Davis said. ‘‘We thought she might have struggled to cross them from the nine-hole, but there were three scratchings, which gave her a chance.’’
Achieving her first threepeat was a case of completing unfinished business for Nyhan and Davis. The pair were eyeing their treble at Waikouaiti in 2011 when they collected wins with Zealous Lady and Fly The Flag.
But the feat alluded them when things went awfully wrong for their main hope of the day, Sonnetsson as Davis was tipped from his sulky soon after the start of the Waikouaiti Cup.
Seven years on and the Waikouaiti Cup was run in bizarre circumstances. The race failed to attract enough nominations to run as it historically has, as a handicap pace.
Instead a field of trotters ploughed their way over 3200m on the puggy Waikouaiti track. The race was won by veteran trotter Valmagne in a painfullyslow 4-44.6.
● Meanwhile Greg Hope was content to wave off a late gallop by the brilliant trotter Enghien in an Ashburton workout yesterday.
. It was almost exactly 12 months ago when Enghien did exactly the same thing, galloping down the Ashburton straight when looking to really get into his work.
‘‘He’s just not as fluent when he comes off the back of something and goes to sprint,’’ Hope said. Hope declared his rising star ready for the Cheviot meeting at Addington on Sunday but not in the race he was initially nominated for. Enghien was down for the feature trot, a 1950-metre mobile, but instead will be transferred into the 2600m stand.