John Dunn rates Classie Brigade the best of his stable’s five chances in the main handicap pace at Addington tonight.

Dunn runs the southern base of his father Robert’s premiership-winning stable and they have a huge numerical advantage tonight, although New Zealand Cup placegetter Classie Brigade (R6, No.9) does face a 20-metre handicap in the small field.

“Backmarks can often be tricky when the ones off the front step and run, but he is such a fast beginner I think he might be able to get past a few of them early,” says Dunn.

The field sees many of the second tier open class horses who are trying to win their way into the Cup, with none of the dominant All Stars horses like Self Assured from recent weeks.

In these types of races it tends to be very hard to make ground because the front line horses step and run, so any horses Classie Brigade can pass early will be crucial.

Tonight’s feature trot sees speedsters Majestic Man (pictured) and Enhance Your Calm both rated $2.40 chances, but Majestic Man is by far the more trustworthy and could be sent forward early to wrest control of the race.

Meanwhile, the connections of almost half the horses entered for tomorrow’s rescheduled Cambridge harness meeting were set to find out at noon on Friday whether they are allowed to start. If you were a punter it seems long odds-on they won’t be.

The meeting was initially programmed for Cambridge on Thursday night, but with horses and staff from the Auckland region, and most importantly including Pukekohe, restricted from traveling south the meeting was moved to a noon start tomorrow.

HRNZ will wait until noon today to make a call on whether to press on with the meeting as is or to run it with an entirely new set of fields re-drawn with the Auckland region horses removed.

“We are waiting as long as possible to see if there are any changes but we need to make a decision by noon Friday,” says HRNZ’s Darrin Williams.

“After that it becomes too hard to get fields in the paper, for bookies to frame markets and an earlier decision gives trainers clarity.

“But unless we hear that Level 3 restrictions out of the Auckland region are lifted or lifting it seems unlikely the meeting will go with its current fields.”

HRNZ has already taken a whole new set of entries for the meeting and if the Auckland horses can’t travel they are confident of having a nine-race meeting with over 100 starters.

“And if Waikato remains at Level 2 while the meeting would be shut to the general public owners of horses racing, as long as they don’t live in the Auckland region, will be allowed to attend.”

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