High-fives from Ottley
SAM Ottley’s driving career has been tracking in an upwards direction for some time now but it hit a real high at Washdyke on Friday.
Drivers have had more than five wins on a card before, but winning with your first five drives was something else again and perhaps has only been achieved once before, by Natalie Rasmussen at Addington in May last year.
Rasmussen won with her only five drives that night, including the Fillies Final with Spanish Armada and the Sales 2yo Open with The Devils Own, although the first of them was a four-horse non-tote Yearling Sales Consolation where the All Stars had three of the starters.
She also won with Heaven Rocks and Stars Align and obviously Ottley wasn’t handling that sort of class on Friday.
‘‘I’ve had three wins at a meeting before, perhaps three times, but you don’t expect anything like that to happen,’’ Ottley said.
‘‘Everything just fell into place perfectly for a while – it was like one of those occasions when you could do no wrong,’’ she added.
The run came to an end when Belle Of Brooklyn finished sixth of seven in the eighth race.
Ottley gave her every possible chance but the three-year-old filly simply ‘‘didn’t handle the wet track conditions’’.
‘‘There were quite a few [other horses[ that didn’t handle the track actually.’’
In the 10th and last race, Ottley momentarily appeared likely to make it six wins from her seven drives, but De Lancome and John Dunn finished too strongly up the passing lane for Ottley and Immortal Change, with five lengths to the rest.
Ottley’s run began in the first race with the Regan Todd-trained trotting filly Show Gait, a daughter of Majestic Son who started RACE IMAGES favourite on debut.
Coincidentally, Show Gait is owned by Rasmussen’s mother Cheryl and she was trained by the All Stars before being transferred to Todd for work on the beach.
Ottley then proceeded to score with Maninthemirror for ‘the boss’ Mark Jones, with Stella Success for Mike Heenan and Mr Midnight for David Mitchell, all at handy odds.
The fifth win with Majestic Son three-year-old Castlereagh was a deadheat after a classic battle with Dexter Dunn and Red Hot Poker.
Dunn got the best from the outof-form Red Hot Poker and led soon after the start from the 20m backmark, with Ottley forced to sit parked for most of the running.
She was able to drop into the trail coming to the home turn and Castlereagh had the lead 50m out, but Dunn coaxed some more effort out of Red Hot Poker and they couldn’t be separated by the photo finish. - NZ Harness News