Cross couple enjoy a lucky trot

By their own admission, nights don’t come much better for Victorian harness racing couple Ray and Janelle Cross than at Ballarat recently.

The passionate square-gaiting devotees were celebrating the impressive win of their four-year-old mare Countess Chiron (Imperial Count – Kumbya), when they found they were on something of a lucky streak.

“I was unharnessing Countess Chiron and (trainer) Glenn Conroy, who was in the next stable said I’d won the trotters association raffle – I really thought he was just joking, but apparently he wasn’t,” Cross laughed

“The night really couldn’t have been much better, could it?”

Ray and Janelle took out the major prize in the VSTA raffle – a service to the trotting powerhouse, Classic Connection. Haras des Trotteurs is the first Australian stud to shuttle a stallion from Europe and the Group 1 winner is standing at the Cardigan-based stud this season.

The win solved an ongoing dilemma in the Cross household about where to place their first-season broodmare Honey Please.

“We hadn’t really settled on anything – we’d been thinking about the Swedish stallion Yield Boko, who sired Aldebaran Ursula, the runner up in the Oaks on Saturday night, but we weren’t really sure what we were going to do with her,” Cross said.

“We bought two tickets in the VTSA raffle – and turns out we only needed one. It’s definitely solved the dilemma!”

Classic Connection boasts an outstanding international pedigree combining the best bloodlines of both sides of the Atlantic being a son of French supersire Love You out of the US 2YO Trotting Filly of the Year Crys Dream.

The Crosses were disappointed to have to retire Honey Please last year due to a bone spur. The highly consistent mare had won 11 races from 80 starts. She was the second foal the couple bred from handy mare Kumbya (11 wins). The first, Someones Singing (by Great Success) won four races before being sent to stud, and the third, Countess Chiron, was their latest winner.

“Countess Chiron has been a long road and a bit frustrating,” Cross said.

“She was an absolute dream to break in and anyone could driver her. As a two- and three-year-old she was very good – even the late Gavin Lang commented on how brilliant she was. She went 1:57 in a fillies race at Bendigo one night, and we were really happy with all that she had done,” he said.

“We turned her out for a good spell for three months, brought her back slowly, did everything right, but this time in she just seemed to have lost the plot a bit. She was doing things like charging the gate, galloping and pacing which were never issues before with her.

“I think she was just losing it a bit when she would draw the front and lead, but then needed to hand up. She totally resented it when it came to taking hold and she got into some bad habits.

“But slowly and with some help from some really smart trotting men in Peter Sanderson and Anthony Butt, we’ve persevered, and we’ll get there with her.”

Cross said the couple would set Countess Chiron for a mare’s race during the Maryborough Redwood Trotting Carnival at the end of the month, and, all going well, would aim her at Sires Stakes features in December.

By Terry Gange for Harnesslink