Ashwood takes aim at Winter Championship heats

Alex Ashwood will bring a distinct Mildura flavour to Ballarat this Saturday night when two stablemates tackle heats of the Winter Championship.

Ashwood has recently taken over training duties of Cemetery Bay from good friend and owner Ian Campbell, with the four-year-old to travel to Bray Raceway with the exciting Accelere, who produced two of the more impressive wins during the Sunraysia carnival in April.

Cemetery Bay’s six career wins have come at Mildura while prepared in Nichols Point by Campbell, but the son of Live Or Die has been in Ashwood’s care since a recent fifth placing on June 24.

“He’s just come down to test the waters,” Ashwood said.

“He’ll probably only have about three or four metro starts to see if he’s more than capable of coming back next preparation, after a spell, to get ready for the Vicbreds.

“He’s a nice little horse. He can follow speed really good… he’s been really well looked after and Ian has taken his time with him so he’s got a great nature.

“It’s going to be a bit of a test for him on Saturday night, but it will be a good guide as to where he is. It seems like he’s going to make the grade.”

While he blazed the gate to lead in both his Mildura wins for Ashwood, the Bendigo trainer-driver is planning a more conservative approach with Accelere first-up from a spell on Saturday night.

The six-year-old hasn’t been seen at the races since his victories in April and has barrier five in the second of the Winter Championship heats.

“His first trial was a bit plain just due to the fact that he had a bit of a let-up after his Mildura campaign, and he’s come back pretty big and pretty fat,” Ashwood said.

“So he had another trial and it topped him off quite nicely. He trialled against Torrid Saint, they got home in 56.1sec and he was still doing it pretty comfortable at the line. He’s trained on pretty well since then.

“Instead of using his gate speed over the 2200m, we might just go back and use his speed at the end because he’s actually quite quick for a big horse.

“Going forward, I think he’ll be a lot better driven for his speed and just coming over the top of them late because he’s quite fast.”

While he thinks the sprint races will suit him best, Ashwood has country cups in mind for the son of Auckland Reactor.

“He follows speed good, he’s got speed and gate speed. He’s got all the right ingredients to be a good country cup horse, but it’s up to him if he’s going to take the next step or not.

“He’s probably in the few nicer ones we’ve got.”

Accelere is originally from New Zealand, but was previously trained in New South Wales by Kevin Pizzuto before heading to Ashwood early this year.

A $30,000 final will be run at Kilmore on July 23 for qualifiers from the two Winter Championship heats.

Ashwood also has Humble Ladd in Saturday night’s feature event, the Group 2 John Slack Memorial Trotters Cup, but it looks a tough assignment from the outside of the back row against a quality field of rivals.