Saturday night’s Aldebaran Park Vicbred Platinum Home Grown Classic Group 1 finals delivered on every front.
Designed to cater for those that weren’t dominant at two years of age, the series allows for talented young trotters to be given time to develop.
The epitome of that came in two forms at Tabcorp Park Melton on the weekend with Alpha Male and Fremarkspoetry both dominant winners in their respective features.
The talk pre-race surrounding Alpha Male was whether he could maintain his gait. In two starts prior to the weekend, including his narrow heat loss, he had made mistakes which arguably cost him wins in each.
That wasn’t a problem however as Chris Alford treated him kindly in the early stages before whipping around the field to control the race from the breeze.
There was never a moment’s worry as they swung for home with the leader Flingandwingit galloping as the Emma Stewart-trained Alpha Male strode past and won with consummate ease.
Hatchback ran into second while Rave On Hall and outsider Dont Touch The Douco rounded out the first four.
Alpha Male’s first win came at just his third start with the three-year-old a well-bred progeny of Majestic Son out of the star mare Aleppo Midas.
In the fillies division the Courtney Slater prepared Fremarkspoetry asserted herself from a long way out when taking the lead from second favourite Peregrine Phoenix with over a lap to go.
Glen Craven described himself post-race as a “passenger” when the filly ripped through a second quarter of the final mile in 28.2secs. In fact she broke 30 seconds for every single quarter as she stopped the clock in a mile rate of 1:56.8.
That time was a new age and sex record in Australasia with the filly less than a second outside of Blitzthemcalder’s three-year-old mark.
Peregrine Phoenix chased hard to produce an admirable second while Zephiane and Royal Charlotte completed the quartet.
Fremarkspoetry is another of the Majestic Son offspring with her owners breeding her from the Safely Kept mare, A Poem Kept.
