Australasia’s best trotters to do battle tonight

Brilliance and a lot of it will spill on to the Melton straight tonight (Feb. 3), when the all-trotting card’s headliner will give a glimpse into harness racing talent that is generations in the making.

The Woodlands Stud Great Southern Star has lured Australasia’s best trotters to battle for the nation’s richest squaregaiting prize in a one night heats-into-final series that was introduced in 2013.

But while the format’s the same much has changed, with the heats now flush with European bloodlines, the passion project of the likes of Yabby Dam Farm’s Pat Driscoll and Aldebaran Park’s Duncan McPherson.

“It’s been about globalisation for years,” McPherson said. “And there is no better example of that than the stellar line up we have in 2023.

“Improved genetics have changed the face of trotting in Victoria and the southern hemisphere. The stallions and dams are better that they have ever been. It is why we are getting better race fields. This is what we’ve been striving for.”

It will be seen throughout the Aurora Australis, Victoria’s $750,000 eight-race series that runs across January and February and is expected to lure international trotters down under in future.

For now, the focus is on bloodlines akin to Europe’s champions, a far cry from 2013, when Vulcan won the first Great Southern Star. Back then, all 20 heat entrants had US sires, but tonight that number is 12, with seven others by French stallions and On Advice by Swedish-born Sebastian K.

“We now have the genetic lines that place us in an internationally globally competitive position with our horses,” McPherson said. “The French-Australian-American mixed lines is giving us athletic, improving horses. It’s the American speed into the form of a European horse.”

An example is Hopeful Beauty, from a French broodmare (Beauty Life) and stallion (Brillantissime), talent that “in 2013 wouldn’t even be on the radar”, and McPherson’s own runner, Aldebaran Zeus – who hails from a Swedish broodmare (Zoia Boko) with Italian lineage and a US stallion (Muscle Hill).

All going well, a stud career awaits him, but it’s nights like tonight that can dictate how great a post-racing career he may have.

“He’s stronger than he’s ever been,” McPherson said. “To go 54.8 (seconds) at Bendigo is globally competitive on a 1000-metre track. I’m hoping he can make the field of the final, and then we’ll worry about the draw after that.”

Booking a final berth is getting harder than ever such is the improving depth of the field. While in 2013 a collective 32 metres separated first from fourth across the Great Southern Star’s heats and final, last year that was only 12 metres.

It’s something well known to Anthony Butt, who steered Vulcan to that 2013 victory and tonight drives up and comer Dont Care.

“The trotting fields have just gotten better,” Butt said. “Duncan and Pat Golino and Jim Connelly have imported so many well-bred mares. It has lifted the sport to a whole new level.

“They are faster, the times shows that, and beautifully gaited. We’d always trailed the US and Europe, and probably still do, but this has brought us up a cog or two and we’re closing the gap.”

Of Dont Care, Butt said he was “a lovely horse, going to top-line in 12 months, and this is his first dip of the toe in with the big boys and girls and he will acquit himself well”.

For complete race entries, click here.

by Michael Howard, for Harness Racing Victoria