| FEATURE RACE COMMENT |
YEAR: 2001
 |
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
YEAR: 2001
 |
| Take A Moment and Anthony Butt |
A lap from home, Tim Butt didn't like it. His runner Take A Moment was halfway through a move around the field; Last Sunset had not spent a lot of gas in front and Mountain Gold looked even fresher in the trail. "I didn't think he had much chance," Butt said. "I could see he was going to have to sit parked over the last thousand metres. Outside two good horses that had done nothing, that probably would've been enough."
Then the unthinkable happened. Last Sunset galloped and came back onto Mountain Gold. Both horses chances were extinguished in the blink of an eye - not to mention others who were up handy but had to take evasive action; out wide and out of trouble, Take A Moment trotted around to the front and then made the race his by reeling off a last half of 57.8 seconds. "I think God had ten each way on Take A Moment tonight," said Butt in his usual jovial manner, still shaking his head at what had unfolded.
All joking aside, it was a magnificent effort by Tim and his brother Anthony to get Take A Moment ready for this big assignment. "A few people had written him off a bit, but I suppose that's understandable after his disappointing run on Show Day," Butt continued. "Still, he was the only one off ten metres tonight and people forget that. His coat was not good at all on Saturday after last week's run, so we just concentrated on keeping him fresh and well within himself. We gave him a bowl around the day before the Dominion and it was only then when I thought he was starting to come back. I still thought it was possibly a week to soon for him though."
Butt said it was a special feeling to win three Dominion Handicaps in a row. Looking through the list of big trotting races that he's won with Lyell Creek and Take A Moment you would almost think that pressure wouldn't play a part, but funnily enough it's the Dominion that has tested Butt the most. "When Lyell Creek won it two years ado he was still on his way up, and he was meeting Mountain Gold for the first time. Then the following season Lyell had been beaten on Show Day after galloping, so the pressure was on to fix that. And this year we were playing catch up with Take A Moment. You can never take these big races for granted," he said.
Amazingly, Take A Moment has won an Inter-Dominion Grand Final and a Dominion Handicap, and has only had 25 starts. "He's still a year away from being able to handle the tough runs against the gun horses week in and week out. He's not thriving on it yet, but he's got the potential to in another twelve months time."
Credit: John Robinson writing in NZHR Weekly