 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2001
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
 |
Last Sunset was devastating in winning the $50,000 Air New Zealand Trotting Free-For-All by a head from Waihemo Hanger in 3:14.4, nipping nearly a second off Basil Deans's 3:15.3 he ran in the NZ Trotting Championship at Addington in 1984, and from all accounts he is not quite trotting to the satisfaction of trainer Tony Herlihy.
In light of this information and considering the enormous effort of Waihemo Hanger, the others will need to be on full alert to head him off.
Tim Butt won't know for sure until Friday night if he has Take A Moment as fit and well as he would like. What he does know is that he will need to be 100% fit if he is to beat Last Sunset in the Clark Boyce Lawyers $100,000 Dominion Handicap at Addington. In neither of his Cup Carnival runs has Take A Moment been right on his game. It wasn't obvious on Cup Day when he won off a 20m handicap, but it was on Show Day as he laboured home in the free-for-all.
Is there a problem with Take A Moment? Yes, there is. Not major, nothing in fact that might not be repaired and warrant-of-fitnessed in good time for the race. Take A Moment had a corn removed from his near-side foot last Wednesday, the day after his win over Special Force and Major decision.
Credit: mike Grainger writing in HRWeekly 21Nov01