Just Believe, Bolt For Brilliance and Ofortuna, who won the three first-round qualifying heats of the SENTrack Inter Dominion Trotting Championship at Ballarat, and Act Now, the winner of the opening division of the pacing series, all belong to strong North American families.

Act Now, one of two heat winners sired by the incomparable Somebeachsomewhere, is out of the American Ideal mare Molly’s Ideal whose dam, Molly’s Lucky Star, was imported from America by well-known Ballarat breeder Bruce Edward, who bred and races Act Now.

Molly’s Lucky Star, who took a record of 1:54.4 in America, left five winners including the Group 1 WA Diamond Classic winner Askmeilltellya, now racing in the land of the stars and stripes.

Just Believe (pictured), a gelding by the French stallion Orlando Vici, a member of the Haras Des Trotteurs’ frozen sire roster, is from the American-bred mare Heavens Above, who was bought as a breeding proposition to Victoria by Kevin Riseley and later sold to Pat Driscoll’s Yabby Dam Farms.

By the Kentucky Futurity winner Like A Prayer (now a leading sire in Finland), Heavens Above was a most successful broodmare. Besides Just Believe, Heavens Above, who was unraced, also figures as the dam of the cup class squaregaiters Shared Interest and Heavenly Sister.

Champion Kiwi trotter Bolt For Brilliance, a son of the great Muscle Hill, is out of Toomuch To Do, an Inter Dominion heat winner herself, and a direct descendant of the noted foundation mare Spangled Maiden, the ancestress of the 1965 Inter Dominion pacing champion Jay Ar.

Spangled Maiden was imported to New Zealand by Sir John McKenzie, a Victorian-born breeder who established the famed Roydon Lodge Stud at Yaldhurst, near Christchurch, in the late 1920s.

Ofortuna, the fastest of the three trotting heat winners, boasts a wealth of North American blood on both sides of her pedigree, being by Majestic Son from Fortunate Phoenix, who is four times removed to the American-bred Josedale Dawn, a mare imported to NZ around 1940.