Second career win is first country cup

Young Victorian harness racing couple Tori Hutchins and Luke Dunne haven’t wasted any time in ticking “first country cup” off their bucket list.

Nine-year-old trotter Sonny Brooke (Majestic Son) gave the couple their biggest thrill as a partnership when he scored a tough win from a 30-metre handicap in the $10,000 TMCenviro Mallee Bull Trotters Cup at Birchip on Sunday (Mar 10).

Driven by Maryborough-based Dunne, the Birchip trotters cup was the second career win for 22-year-old Hutchins, who’s had less than a dozen starts as a trainer.

“We saw him advertised for sale and inquired if Linsay (owner-breeder Linsay Potter) would send him to us on a lease,” Hutchins said.

“The main interest in getting him was that he was a long way back in grade – from around a 70 class to a 52 class and he didn’t seem like he was giving up or too tired, just not going as well as he could. We thought he was back into a winnable grade,” she said.

That assessment proved correct, with Sonny Brooke beginning like a bullet from the tapes, then working to the death seat, before scoring by a half head in the trotters cup.

Birchip results and replays click here

Hutchins and Dunne combine preparing a small team of racehorses with breaking, pre-training and educating youngsters at their Landrigan Lodge base near Maryborough.

“We’ve only got two going racehorses at the moment because it’s a busy time of year with the breakers – just Sonny Brooke and also his half-sister Kellybush (Danny Bouchea),” Dunne said.

“It’s really just some little one percenters that we’ve fixed with Sonny Brooke.  A change of scenery was a big one, I think, and we’ve also worked on his feet quite a bit.  He was a bit sore in the back and had some acupuncture, too,” he said.

Sonny Brooke has had just three starts for Hutchins and Dunne, for a first-up fifth, a runner-up performance in a heat of the Central Victorian Trotters Championship last week at Boort and now his Birchip win.

“We knew when we raced him first up, he wasn’t going to be where we wanted him to be, and there’s definitely still improvement in him – we plan to start giving him some work in the pool, and that should be really good for his recovery work,” Dunne said.

“The exciting thing about him is that he’s still early in his prep and he’s still not at 100 percent.  Our main goal is to get him right for the ($20,000) Mildura Trotters Cup in early April,” he said.

“So we will see how he pulls up from Birchip before we decide whether to go through to the final of the Central Victorian Championship (Charlton March 17).  If he needs more time, we will give him that because Mildura is still the main focus.”

Even before his Birchip Cup win, Sonny Brooke’s “old man quirks” and his work ethic had established himself as a firm favorite in the Hutchins-Dunne camp.

“I don’t normally have favorites, but I have to admit he is! I’m really not one to fall in love with many horses, I like to treat them all the same. But he is an absolute gem,” Dunne said.

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink