Yole on track for big 150
LEADING Tasmanian harness trainer Ben Yole is rapidly closing in on 150 wins for the season which he says is a number beyond his wildest dreams.
Yole has won the past three Tasmanian trainer premierships with his first coming in the 2015-16 season when he prepared 107 winners and for the past two seasons he has amassed 124 wins each season to easily take the state’s training honours.
But the former Victorian has already notched 137 wins this season and with 20 meetings remaining it is almost certain he will at least reach 150 wins but will more likely go close to 170.
Yole and his family arrived in Tasmania from country Victoria about five years ago with the hope of establishing a competitive stable, but when he went out on a limb and started to build a team of about 50 horses his business flourished.
Buying the right horses and working overtime to secure new owners started to pay dividends and that led to him winning his first state premiership in 2015-16.
And the cherry on the cake was his younger brother Mark Yole winning the state driver’s premiership with 85 wins.
While Todd Rattray has taken that honour for the past two seasons, Mark Yole is again in line to make it a family premiership double as he has amassed 72 wins so far this season to lead Ricky Duggan (58) and Gareth Rattray (56), both of whom have been making inroads in recent weeks.
“It’s hard enough trying to get 100 wins for a season so to have snared 124 the past two [seasons] was a brilliant result. But this season it has been amazing,” Yole said.
“We’ve built the team up to about 60 and that has been constant for the best part of the season, but we will be winding that down once the two meetings a week stops at the end of next month.
“Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be training possibly 150 winners in a season, but the way things have been going that is a real probability.”
Yole snared five winners last weekend with three in Hobart last Friday night and two in Launceston on Sunday.
One of his winners was Our Quinn, which won a C5-C7 in Hobart on Friday. He backed up on Sunday with a convincing win in a C4-C6 over 2200m and clocked a mile rate of 1.59.3 with Mark Yole aboard.
“Our Quinn is a horse we bought out of a Menangle [NSW] claimer for $9000 in January and he’s won over $30,000 for the owners so he has definitely paid his way.
“The horse has probably got another graded win in him before he heads off to the claimers here, but that’s what we are able to do with our team and it is a formula that works.” SCOTTSDALE harness trainer Kent Rattray celebrated one of his sweetest wins when his star three-year-old Sunny Sanz gave his rivals a pacing lesson in the $50,000 Globe Derby final over 2200m in Launceston on Sunday night.
Sunny Sanz led throughout and when driver John Walters released the reins the gelded son of Sportswriter left his rivals in his wake to go on and score by 11m from Burningupthefloor with outsider Donny in Paris over 2m astern. Sunny Sanz has won six of his seven starts for earnings of almost $60,000, with his latest effort producing a mile rate of 1:58.7.