Hopeful Beauty captured the biggest victory of her short career when she beat the boys in Thursday’s De Bortoli Yarra Valley Trotters Cup.
Racing as the sole mare in the field, the Anton Golino-trained five-year-old overcame a false start, 10m handicap and a place in the breeze for over a lap to claim the Group 2 feature in track record time.
Hopeful Beauty stepped well from the standing start and headed up the one-out line until Greg Sugars made his move on favourite One Over All to take up the death seat at the bell. Sugars’ charge surged to the front approaching the straight, but Hopeful Beauty had the last shot at him and cruised past to win by just over 2m on the line.
“She’s got the record on the board beating some of the better open class (trotters), and I felt, take out Greg’s horse (One Over All), it was probably a drop in grade for her,” winning driver Nathan Jack said.
“She got a good trip even though she was in the breeze - which was not really where we wanted to be – for a long time.
“When we could keep hanging back and inviting Greg around, that worked out perfect. She was good enough to run past Greg and I'm sure she's going to be a force to be reckoned with in the bigger races.”
The winning mile rate of 2:00.6 lowered the Yarra Valley 2650m standing start record for the trotters, which was set by Havehorsewilltravel when he won last year’s edition of the race.
Hopeful Beauty, who finished fourth to One Over All first-up from a spell in the McNamara Memorial Trotters Cup at Geelong on October 22, has now won 10 races from 32 starts for over $110,000 in prizemoney.