Five-year-old gelding Rocknroll Walla’s tough win in the Benstud Standardbreds Final at Melton harness racing on Saturday night (Jun 1) put a bright light on what has been a rough week for the Barnes family of Parwan.
The field in the $15,000 final was drawn from qualifiers at Ballarat, Shepparton and Cranbourne and, despite a tough draw in barrier 13, Rocknroll Walla was sent out $3 favorite.
Reinsman Chris Alford allowed the field to settle before sending Rocknroll Walla forward to the position outside the leader.
“It didn’t quite work out as planned – there wasn’t as much speed as I expected early and when I came out another popped out in front of me, so I had to do a little bit of extra work than I’d hoped,” Alford said.
“But when I asked him to go (at the 400 metre mark), he went,” he said.
Rocknroll Walla powered up the straight to hold out a fast-finishing Laydon by a head, returning a mile rate of 1:58.3 for the 2240 metre journey (30, 31, 29.6, 28).
Hobby trainer Bradley Barnes is co-trainer of Rocknroll Walla with his dad David from their property at Parwan, just outside Melbourne.
He said the win was a boost after a difficult week, during which they had retired their stable star Mumpaysthebills.
From just nine career starts, Mumpaysthebills had two wins and four placings. She gave the Barnes family their only Group 1 success in 2022 when she took out the Vicbred Platinum Home Grown Classic (3yo trotting fillies).
“She cracked a sesamoid bone straight after she won that Vicbred (in March), but we got her back from that. Then she ran second in the Oaks (in October) and did a suspensory. We persevered and got her back to the trials, but this week there have been a few more problems and we’ve had to retire her,” Barnes said.
“It’s not great, but she had a lot of problems, and it was the right decision. She gave us a lot of thrills and if there is any consolation, she is a filly and hopefully we can breed a nice one from her,” he said.
Bradley said Rocknroll Walla had been purchased after a friend, Max Driscoll, had told him one of his owners was reducing stock, and wanted to sell the horse. He is owned by David Barnes, Bradley’s wife Barclay and their son, three-year-old Archie.
“Walla had to have a bone scrape (OCD operation) on his hock right after we purchased him. He took a while to get going but he is repaying us now,” Barnes said.
“Every time he steps out, he puts his best foot forward and he is pretty consistent with what he has done. We will have a look at another race here at Melton in a week or two, and hopefully he can just continue to improve,” he said.
