Bright city lights beckon for Mick’s mare

Much-travelled Victorian horseman Michael Bellman, still on a high from two recent successful whirlwind trips to South Australia, now faces a harness racing dilemma.

The Ararat-based freelance driver acknowledges he loves to target country Victoria features, but his in-form square-gaiter Jazspur (Pegasus Spur) will almost certainly be exclusively city bound for a bit now.

“I love racing at the small country tracks, but with her being a 97 rated mare, I feel we’re handicapped out of those country cups,” Bellman said.

“I would have loved to be running in the ($15,000) St Arnaud Cup next Sunday week but we’d be starting off 30 metres behind, and on a tighter track, I’d need everything to go our way,” he said.

“At this stage I’ll almost certainly head to Melton instead and go around in a $22,000 free-for-all. It’s just going to be pick and choose while the horse is going super.”

Bellman decided weeks ago to target the recent Group 3 Ladbrokes $40,000 South Australian Trotters Cup heat and finals weeks ago, a race he had won back in 2014 with Trappers Puzzle (for Gary Bailey, of Portarlington) and which his mother D’Arne had captured with Alba Foyle in 2001.

And over the over the past two weekends (a 12-hour return trip each time) Bellman made it a clean sweep of the series, bringing Jazspur’s season record to seven wins and seven placings from 25 starts.

“She is a brilliant standing-start horse and the longer trips like 2645m are just perfect,” he said.

“I was a little lucky early on both occasions to avoid some gallopers, but when I landed two back in the running line in the final, I thought if she sprinted like she did in the heat, we’d be right.”

And Jazspur did just that – putting her head down and winning by nearly nine metres from Wish Upona Dream (Kerryn Manning), a horse that Bellman normally drives for Bendigo trainer Bec Morrissey.

Bellman believes Jazspur, raced by enthusiastic Ararat owner-breeders Gary and Tracey Hull, is getting better with age.

“Out of three of their trotters I had going – Tik Tok, Majestic Pride and Jazspur – she was always the weaker. But being by Pegasus Spur, we were always hoping she’d get better each season,” he said.

“In saying that, there was a time where we thought she would be lucky to ever race again. She trod on a bit of Reosteel which went up the sole of her foot at the front of her frog. It hit the navicular nerve, and the vet said it could be the end of her racing.

“She went out in a paddock with some others. I used to check on them regularly and it was four months later that I noticed she was belting around and looked good. So back into work she came, and her race form has been great.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink