A week is a long time in harness racing and it was left to Greg Sugars and emerging Grand Circuit star Better Eclipse to fly the flag for Victoria in Saturday night’s Group 1 Sunshine Sprint at Albion Park.
In a stark contrast to the previous Saturday night when Victorian trained horses took out all four Group pacing events, punters were left lamenting after a succession of Victorian short-priced favorites fell by the wayside.
Inside a couple of hours, Amore Vita ($1.60 fav), Maajida ($1.15 fav),) and Beyond Delight ($1.33 fav) all failed to run a place so Sugars took it upon himself to balance the ledger leaving no margin for error on Better Eclipse.
Better Eclipse ($3.60 fav) sat parked for the first 700 metres before Sugars wrested the lead off Turn It Up with 900 metres to travel and the four-year-old staved off the challenges from seasoned older horses to score by a metre and a half from Spirit Of St Louis.
Sugars acknowledged the stable was fortunate to have a flagship horse such as Better Eclipse.
“Jess and I are obviously relatively new to the training caper, Larajay Farms has only been in operation for four or five years and to have a horse of this calibre is a bit daunting really,” Sugars said.
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“Every time he has had a challenge and we’ve thrown him in the deep end, somehow he has been able to rise to the occasion and those sort of horses are very few and far between.”
Sugars said the pre-race tactics included finding the lead at some stage of the race.
“I was parked for a fair way early and it took a little bit to get there but it worked out well and I was confident of the move (of finding the lead) coming off,” he said.
Sugars said Better Eclipse would round off the Carnival when he lines up in The Blacks A Fake on Saturday.
“We’ve been incredibly proud of what he has been able to do for us and hopefully there is more to come,” he said.
The stable went within a neck of completing a Group 1 double earlier in the evening when Momentslikethese was narrowly beaten in the The Golden Girl.
Sugars sooled Momentslikethese to lead shortly after the start, relegating the long odds favorite Maajida to three back along the pegs, however she just failed to hold off Town Echo, who grabbed victory in the shadows of the post.
It was a memorable win for young NSW trainer Jack Trainer who took over the training of the former New Zealand mare earlier this year.
“It’s a credit to my mare she really dug in deep,” he said.
