Buses now taking a back seat for JJ

Interdominion-winning horseman John Justice made the transition from bus driving to again being a harness racing winner in near record time.

Justice, based at Toolern Vale, showed his customary fine touch with a training and driving double at Tabcorp Park Melton on Monday afternoon after only recently returning to the sport.

"I quite enjoyed the change in direction and driving buses, but we're really spoilt in harness racing-it's a great lifestyle, there's good people and lots of fun," he said.

Justice is keen to assemble a handy team again after putting an enforced 12 month "holiday" behind him – and two winners in his first week back at the races sets a tough benchmark.

Three-year-old gelding Long Weekend (Sunshine Beach-Quick Jet (Jeremes Jet) was impressive in easily taking out the Prydes Easifeed Pace, while four-year-old gelding Hatchback (Angus Hall-Jauriol (Wagon Apollo) didn't put a foot wrong to win the Aldebaran Park Trotters Handicap

"Previous to Monday, I'd had two drives back, one for my brother Lance which galloped out on me, and I then ran second on Hatchback on Saturday," Justice said.

"Hatchback and Long Weekend are certainly both bright prospects and they should keep improving with any sort of luck," he said.

"I've always had a bit of an opinion about Long Weekend. He was probably going to nearly win on his debut for me last year as a two-year-old but got tightened and didn't know what he was doing.

"But he will keep learning with more race experience and should develop into a nice horse."

Square-gaiter Hatchback is a model of consistency with four wins and 14 placings for stakemoney of $43,000 from just 28 starts.

Hatchback is owned by Justice's wife Kasia Sas, his 89-year-old mother Josie and long-time friend and stable client Graeme Riley, of Melbourne. The same trio are part owners of Long Weekend, along with Peter and Jenny O'Byrne.

"The O'Byrnes live at Clunes and we've been friends for a long time. We've known them along with Graeme for probably 20 to 25 years," Justice said.

"My mum is still very active. She lives with her partner at Melton and they come and work at the stables nearly every day," he said.

Justice said his bus driving job involved a permanent school run, V-Line trips and some charter work.

"Having driven semis and horse trucks, I didn't find the buses, even the bigger V-Line ones, too daunting," he said.

"I enjoyed driving those that were autos; they were good. I did a few Traralgon trips for V-Line and quite enjoyed them. But some of the old rattlers weren't that easy to drive.

"I did shatter a window after hitting a pole on a metro service in Essendon and apart from that and giving another bus a bit of a scrape along the side, it was all good!"

Justice has 10 horses in work and is eager to keep down to around that tally.

But with his 17-year-old daughter Ewa having a stablehand licence and starting to drive trackwork, along with at least five yearlings ready to resume, he may just have his work cutout in keeping his numbers down.

"While I didn't follow the trots all that closely while I was away, I did keep a check on the horses that I had before I went out," he said.

And as for furthering his bus driving career, Justice admitted that he had told them that he was still available to drive on a casual basis whenever needed.

Terry Gange

NewsAlert PR Mildura