10yo Grand Dam still racing – and winning!

It’s not every day a grand-dam with only one eye salutes at the racetrack but that’s what ten-year-old NSW harness racing mare Pom Pay (Four Starzzz Shark) has done.

From a middling two- and three-year-old, to being a mum and a grand-dam, through injury and a late return to the racetrack, the journey of Pom Pay is certainly a chequered one, but the last start Albion Park (May 26) winner is a credit to the patience and persistence of her Bathurst-based trainer Graham Betts and his family.

“We bred Pom Pay – in fact we bred and raced her mother Verroom (Village Jasper), but Pom Pay didn’t show much as a two-year-old and early three-year-old.  She was pretty ordinary, actually,” Betts said.

Pom Pay took 15 starts to even weigh in during her early racing career, and Betts and his wife Monica were on the verge of sending her on her way as an embryo transfer mare when she began showing signs of improvement.

“She won her first race as a four-year-old, and from there she just gradually got better,” Betts said.

“But she went a bit sore in a fetlock joint, and by then she’d won four races and I really liked her. I didn’t want to break her right down, so we turned her out and got her in foal,” he said.

That was in 2017 – the resulting foal, by Sunshine Beach, was named Onya Sonya.

“But then the next year she didn’t get in foal, and we had a drought.  I don’t like horses standing around for no reason, and she seemed very sound, so I decided to put her back in work,” Betts said.

“I got plenty of stick from everyone here for having another go with her – but she won at her ninth start back at the races, and I did give it to them when she won!” he laughed.

“Actually, it was my daughter Phoebe’s first drive on her. She isn’t a brilliant horse, but she is a very consistent little mare, and think I’ve come down on the right side of the ledger in the end!”

Pom Pay has won 17 races and has been placed 55 times from her 221 career starts – including about $90,000 in stakes since returning to racing after having her foal.

But that wasn’t the end of Pom Pay’s drama.  Betts was planning to take her north for a Queensland campaign in May last year when he called the vet to look at an ulcer on the horse’s eye.

“Long story short, the vet had to remove her eye about three weeks before we headed off to Queensland.  But she bounced back without a worry – in fact she won at her first start in Queensland, at Redcliffe,” he said.

But back to Pom Pay’s grand dam status.

Her foal, Onya Sonya, was broken in as a yearling, but suffered horrific injuries after being caught up in a fence.

“Her back legs were pretty much stripped, and I called the vet thinking we’d have her put down,” Betts said.

“But between the vet George Corones and my other daughter Maggie, they decided to try to nurse her through, which they did. She couldn’t even get up for a few days and it took months and months of work on her, but it was their persistence that saved her,” he said.

“It didn’t really look like racing was ever an option for Onya Sonya, though, so as a two-year-old we got her in foal.  She had a lovely little solid Sportswriter colt, who’s now a yearling.”

After the 12 months off, Onya Sonya’s legs were looking sound, so Betts put her back in work last year.  Now four, the mare has had 19 starts for just one placing, but her last start fourth at Bathurst (June 2) showed promise.

“She’s a bit like Pom Pay – she wasn’t much good in the early days, but she’s improving.  She’s nowhere near as good as Pom Pay, but I’m hoping she’ll keep getting better, like her mum did,” Betts said.

Betts, who is a respected breaker, works a team of around 10 horses, as well as being employed as a farm hand at a sheep and cattle property.

He met his wife Monica (nee Glazebrook, a trainer and former driver) through the sport, and four of their five children are actively involved: Phoebe (driver), Jed (trainer-driver), Jake (driver) and  Maggie (stablehand).  Daughter Georgie has recently become involved as an owner.

“I wasn’t from a harness racing family. When I was about 15 my sister started going out with (trainer) Gary Williams, who had a couple of horses going, and I started helping him.  It just went from there,” Betts said.

“Now I don’t think I will ever get out of it – it’s a bug!”