Nev retakes the reins

There will be plenty of what-ifs and scenarios for trainer Neville Pangrazio to ponder during the one-hour trip from Rochester to Shepparton tonight, when he will take the reins of his exciting trotter Moonshine Linda and a pacer squaring off against one of the game’s big guns.

Pangrazio returns to the sulky for the fifth and sixth times this season as an adjustment to region-based racing, carrying with him dreams of winning his first driving double or, at least, adding to his nine career wins from 180 starts.

“I normally do all my trials, but hand them out to the grade A drivers for race day,” Pangrazio said. “You have to be doing it all the time to be able to compete with the best drivers. They make all the decisions on the spot and if you snooze you lose.”

But, with many leading drivers drawn outside of the North East region, he’s back in the sulky and with good reason for optimism at Shepparton tonight.

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Moonshine Linda is a leading chance in the Saddleworld Shepparton Trotters Handicap and Showgun Thomas is well drawn to be in front a long way in the Your Solid Real Estate Pace, where Chariots Of Fire winner Lochinvar Art looms large off the back row.

“I’ve never had a double, that’s the aim,” Pangrazio said, though he admits it will be a tall ask against David Moran’s Group 1 winner, whose 1:48.6 winning mile rate at Tabcorp Park Melton changed the Victorian landscape.

“It will take a nice horse to get past me at the start,” Pangrazio said of Showgun Thomas, who will begin from gate one with the scratching of emergencies. “2100 (metres) suits him really good.

“Lochinvar Art can’t be at his best first up, but even if he’s not quite fit he has enough ability to easily get through this field. I’m expecting (Showgun Thomas) will be a really good place chance.”

There will be more lofty expectations on Moonshine Linda, with the trotting mare having run second when first up in over a month at Shepparton on April 6.

She fell just a metre shy of eclipsing winner Gunning and notably was able to outsprint multiple Group 1 winner Big Jack Hammer in the closing stages, although the latter had a more torrid run.

“I think she’s learning what it’s all about,” Pangrazio said. “She’s a bit fitter this time in, I think she will go really good tonight.”

A home-bred winner of more than $200,000, including two Group 1 Vicbred wins, Pangrazio said Moonshine Linda “through her age grades was probably a bit better than the others”, and now the five-year-old is well placed to challenge the elite.

“She’s up to the Big Jack Hammers and the rest of them,” he said. “She can sit on any speed and still come home. She is not noted as a real tough horse, but she can certainly sit and sprint.

“We’ve changed our training with her. When she was with Gav (Lang) there were a few things he was doing differently that worked well. He thought she might be a bit too pretty, so we have worked on her muscle tone in certain areas, and now she goes as good as Showgun Thomas at home and he’s a free-for-all pacer.”

And, touch wood, she can get away from the standing start. She will launch from 30 metres tonight, inside Andyou and 10 metres in front of backmarker Big Jack Hammer.

“She can get a tiny little bit ancy, but she’s very smart, she listens to me and when she’s calm she’s watching the tapes herself,” he said. “She can really ping, hopefully she will be past three parts of them in the first 100 metres.”

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