Gallagher gets his chance to shine

With a century of winners this season already under his belt, exciting young harness racing reinsman Josh Gallagher makes no secret of his desire to drive more Group 1 wins.

And while he would probably prefer to be driving in Inter Dominion heats at Shepparton tonight (Nov. 29), the winner of last year’s Inter Dominion with Boncel Benjamin will instead be looking for a massive day at Tabcorp Park Menangle.

With his four major rivals all competing at Shepparton, Gallagher is in demand at Menangle with a drive in every race, and at least three of those expected to start favourites in their respective races.

Gallagher has had to chase the likes of Cameron Hart (181 wins), Jack Callaghan (160 wins), his ‘stablemate’ Robbie Morris (149 wins) and Amanda Turnbull (131 wins) for most of the season and with just a month to go he has little chance of catching any of them.

They’re all at Shepparton tonight so Gallagher heads to Menangle as the man to follow.

It’s no surprise KerryAnn Morris, also in Melbourne, has relied on Josh to look after her team and he will drive five of her chances in the seven races.

The best of those will be last week’s impressive first-up winner Wavethebill, who raced away from his rivals in a stunning 1:51.1 first-up win for the stable, scoring by almost 27 metres.

The four-year-old gelding has an even better draw in gate three this afternoon and despite a slight rise in class will be one of the shorter-priced favourites of the day.

“He probably surprised Rob a bit last week; he was even better than he expected,” said Gallagher.

“He races free-legged and is very fluent in his gait and shapes as a nice horse.

“He also has a good turn of foot and we’ll adopt the same tactics today.

“We won’t push him off the gate but we’ll be headed forward again.”

Gallagher will also be in favour with punters in Race 5, where he will drive Parallel ($2.75F) for Morris.

“He’s been up and down and we’ve had a few issues with him but we’re getting on top of it now,” said Gallagher.

“We’ll need to drive him for a bit of luck, but he won’t disappoint.

Trainer Leon Jurd has also snapped up Gallagher to drive Blue Stone, perfectly-drawn in gate one and a $4 early favourite.

“He has a plum draw so we’ll use that to our advantage.”

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by Michael Court, for HRNSW