| FEATURE RACE COMMENT |
YEAR: 1975
 |
Upstanding eight-year-old gelding Hal Good completed a brilliant double for his breeder-owner Arthur Chesmar and trainer-driver Denis Nyhan when he powered home to snatch a narrow victory over Easton Light in the 1975 Dominion Trotting Handicap the Nation's premier event for squaregaiters at Addington on Show Day. Back in early January he produced a similar paralysing burst to take the other annual trotting feature on the course the 1975 Canterbury Park Trotting Cup and again it was the northern champion Easton Light who filled second placing.
By the now deceased import Goodland (USA) sire of other squaregait standouts in Markalan, Good Admiral, Tunza Time and the brilliant juvenile and now successful Endeavour Lodge-based sire Westland King, Hal Good is from the untried mare Halswell's Pride by Kingcobra (Aust) from a star racemare of the forties for Arthur's late father George in Shadow Maid, who as well as winning the 1943 Auckland Cup ran third behind two champions Gold Bar and Interity in the NZ Cup of 1945. By brilliant chestnut pacer of the early thirties and winner of the 1933 NZ Cup Red Shadow (NZ), Shadow Maid was from Homelass. This line has been in the Chesmar family for half a century or so, the late George breeding Homelass back in 1927.
Although Hal Good presented him with his first Dominion Handicap victory, winning prestige events is no new experience for Denis Nyhan who trains his team at Templeton. Son of the Johnny Globe man Don Nyhan, Denis has, in a couple of decades of driving standardbreds been associated with more top horses of both codes than most reinsmen hope to sit behind in a lifetime.
Credit: David McCarthy writing in NZ Trotguide