Some promises are made to be broken!

There was more than a touch of irony when Victorian harness racing trainer Jess Tubbs and her mum Kate came to name their well-bred Betting Line youngster – but Not As Promised, as he would be known, is having the last say!

“Nothing about him was what we were looking for or expecting,” Tubbs said.

“We bought his dam All Promises because I wanted to breed myself a nice little two-year-old pacer – we ended up breeding this giant, as it turned out, trotter!” she laughed.

Tubbs said she had high hopes for breeding some handy early-going pacers after acquiring QBred Series, Queensland Oaks and Australian Oaks winner All Promises, a winner of 17 races (and the daughter of good producing Fake Left mare As Promised), from Queensland trainer Shannon Price.

“I saw the mare listed in one of the broodmare sales and rang Shannon to see if I could buy her.  Our family had a relationship with her dad Tony Price, and we’re still friends with Team Raboki,” Tubbs said.

“Tony stayed at our place with All Promises when they came down and won the Australian Oaks, and I thought it would be a nice link to the family,” she said.

And while Tubbs specifically chose the compact Betting Line as a sire for the mare, to try to breed a handy juvenile pacer, that was not how things turned out.

“Zeus was a giant but of course, we still assumed he would pace.  We sent him to Nathan Cahir and Nathan did a great job as he always does, but he just broke in terribly,” Tubbs said.

“We got him back home, and every preparation he had he was pretty useless,” she said.

“You can’t make them do what they don’t want to, and I really thought he was just going to be useless when he couldn’t pace at all.

“But he eventually started to trot of his own accord, so we thought why not?  We threw some trotting boots on him and went with it.  In the early days he couldn’t really hold his gait that well though.  Our track is pretty hilly and it’s difficult even for some of the trotting-bred babies to be confident on it.”

Zeus was dispatched to the paddock again and wasn’t put back into work until he was three and, Tubbs said, that was when he decided he really was a trotter.

“He was eyeing down the barrel of life after racing a few times, to be honest, but he got a reprieve because we own him ourselves and because we have plenty of space here at Larajay Farm,” she said.

“Greg’s sister Kylie spent a lot of time with him, and we worked him a lot on the straight track, and I think I underestimated just what a difference a straight track can make with the young trotters. He just kept getting more and more solid in his gait.”

Once he established that square-gaiting was his go and made it to the track, Not As Promised wasted little time in breaking his maiden status.

After being placed at his first three starts, the three-year-old broke through at Shepparton (Mar 17) to win for Tubbs’ husband Greg Sugars, burning to the front and trotting faultlessly to score by 18 metres in a time of 2:02.2.

“He has definitely surprised us a lot.  I don’t think he’s a superstar, but we would take anything at this point, and a VicBred bonus and a win was pretty exciting and extra special when you have bred them yourself,” she said.

“We’ll keep ticking along with him and hopefully with the ratings system we can keep finding some races for him to win.”

And as for the future hopes from progeny of All Promises?

“We have a Warrawee Needy who broke in freeleg pacing and an Always Be Miki who’s broken in really nicely and paces, so sometimes things do go to plan!” Tubbs laughed.

“And Alice (All Promises) is officially retired.  She’s living her best life here with us.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink