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Amanda Tomlinson & Ken Ford share the spoils

Ken Ford is taking a softly-softly approach with Aramid this season. He knows it is a tall order to expect the 5-year-old trotter to attend every big event, and he has already declared he won't be there. "He won't be going to Ashburton; no mobiles. I don't want to bustle him. Kaikoura might be next," he said.

Ford is aware that Aramid has been busy for one so young, and intends to give him a quieter season. "He rushed along very quickly when he started. It was perhaps a bit much for him. Now, he is looking a bit stronger on the front end."

Already he has started off his new campaign with a bang, a solid start for seventh at Motukarara followed by a tremendously good run to beat Zirinovsky in the Giannis Pita Bread Canterbury Park Trotting Cup at Addington last Friday night. He did some ground at the start, tracked up Castleton's Mission over the last lap, sat three-wide from the 800m, then ran clear when Jimmy Curtin told him there was some business to do in the straight.

It was Aramid at his best, and at his best he is very much in the top handful of trotters in New Zealand. "I was a wee bit confident before the race," said Ford. "He has never worked better; he's never been better round the place," he said. Ford said he was pleased with the way Aramid came through the race. He ate up everything and jogged up the next day. It was something I used to do as a rugby player, when I played sixteen years of senior rugby in Kaikoura. I had always have a quiet run the next day to get any soreness out of the body," he said.

Ford and his daughter Amanda Tomlinson, who part-owns Aramid, know what it takes to keep the level up. Tomlinson was a New Zealand 200 metre sprint champion on the track, and played for the New Zealand women's rugby team. Aramid couldn't be in better hands.

Credit: Mike Grainger writing in HRWeekly 13Oct04