Next stop New Zealand for Redwood Day victors

There were current harness racing superstars, emerging stars, a big crowd and perfect conditions for Victoria’s Redwood Day on Sunday (Oct 27), and club officials stamped the annual showcase of trotting to be one of the best in many years.

There’s no bigger program of square gaiting on the Australian calendar than the Redwood Carnival and Maryborough Harness Racing Club delivered another magnificent success for the 2024 edition.

Undisputed superstar of the Southern Hemisphere Just Believe (Orlando Vici) was on hand and gave a faultless display of the grace and beauty of the trotting gait, in the Group 3 Bendigo Community Bank Maryborough Gold Cup – incredibly his first victory at Maryborough in six attempts at track.

The crowd-pleasing six-metre win will be the eight-year old’s final hit-out before the New Zealand Dominion during Addington Cup Week next month, with Just Believe to fly out for NZ on Tuesday night.

The Maryborough victory by trotting’s biggest current day star was just the curtain raiser for list of Group-level features.

The Group 1 Haras Des Trotteurs Victoria Derby Final underscored the buzz around what is shaping as Victoria’s next “big thing” in freakish filly Keayang Zahara (Volstead).

The three-time Group 1 winner is bred and raced by the Ecklin South-based Lee family, with Marg training the star filly and son Jason her regular driver.

After an effortless heat win the previous Sunday, driver Jason Lee was handed a tricky assignment in the final with the short odds-on favorite drawing inside the back row in barrier eight.

But when the second favorite Violet Stanford broke, reorganizing the running order, Lee was gifted an exit opportunity, and put Keayang Zahara forward, dashing around the field and reaching the front with a lap to go.

“There is a lot of pressure racing a horse like her, but we own her ourselves as a family so that does make it a lot easier to deal with,” Lee said after the race.

“There are a lot of things you have to miss out on in life to try to get a horse like this and you don’t always get one. We’ve been very lucky and we’re enjoying the ride,” he said.

Keayang Zahara, is now also New Zealand bound, lining up for the new $500,000 slot race, The Ascent, at Addington Raceway on Friday, November 15.

Race sponsor Yabby Dam Farms and Haras Des Trotteurs principle Pat Driscoll paid the ultimate compliment.

“It’s been over 100 years the derby has been run and I doubt very much whether we have seen a better winner than Keayang Zahara – she will be representing our industry for a very long time,” he predicted.

The headline Group 1 of the day, the Redwood Classic two-year-old feature also had a stellar lineup of promising youngsters.

The challenge of the standing start conditions was raised to another level by an extended delay when one of the favorites Gatesys Gem lost a shoe in the pre-race warm up.

But Volstead gelding Vytis, trained by former Kiwis Richard and Emmett Brosnan and driven by Emmett, showed remarkable composure to trot faultlessly from the number 1 barrier, before handing up to the Jess Tubbs-trained Enchauffour.

Vytis was able to take advantage of the sprint lane in impressive fashion to score by four metres from Gatesys Gem and Enchauffour.

“He has been a great horse from the start, very professional, with a very fast 200 metre sprint,” Emmett said of the three-times winner.

“I think he’s a lot more versatile than a lot of people give him credit for. He has run times and hasn’t had the best of runs in some of them, and I knew if he was following a helmet and to the sprint lane he would finish off,” he said.

“That was probably his first draw inside four, so that made it a bit easier this time.  They still have to do it though, but he took it all in his stride and the rest is history, I guess.”

And although he didn’t feature in the major events of the day, a win in the $10,000 Maryborough Advertiser Trot was enough for Australia’s leading driver James Herbertson to record another key milestone in his flourishing career.

The 24-year-old recorded his 300^th victory for the season – the first time he has achieved that mark – piloting Tyrone Abela’s handy seven-year-old Gee Cee Calder (Im Stately) to the gelding’s fifth successive win this preparation.

Herbertson is also due to head offshore briefly next month, representing his country in France in the Prix des Rencontres Internationales du Trotteur Français at Vincennes, and spend time working alongside world-renowned horseman Jean-Michel Bazire.

For complete race results, click here.

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink