Blinding Light well overdue winning turn

Well known Pukekohe harness racing identity Les Purdon has been around horses all his life and like the rest of us accepts the ups and downs that goes with racing horses.

Les has always had a big opinion of the Charles Brosnan four year old Blinding Light but the racing gods have rarely smiled on him on racenight.

Les acquired the horse in payment for a debt as a yearling and initially placed the horse with his son in law Steven Reid for whom he had some success.

" He won a race at two and another one as an early three year old but not much has gone right since then."

" Little issues started to pop up and we would no sooner clean one up than another one would appear."

" He was starting to go backwards not forwards so in the end we tipped him out," Les told Harnesslink this week.

Back from a break, Blinding Light continued to have issues and at that point Les decided that maybe the horse just needed a complete change of scenery.

" He just didn't seem happy in himself in the big stable environment at Steven's so I decided to move him to my daughter Angela's place."

"She only has a small team and he gets a lot more individual attention there."

" He has certainly thrived since being at Angela's and his work lately has been much more like the old Blinding Light " Les said.

First up for Angela at Alexandra Park in late August, Blinding Light ran a great second to the very talented Motown, beaten just a neck.

However Angela still thought she needed to iron out a couple of things and it wasn't until three months later that Blinding Light lined up again at Cambridge.

Again he went under in a close finish, beaten a nose by Crocketts Cullen.

Les was rapt with the run.

" He was pretty short going into Cambridge a couple of weeks ago and to get as close as he did was a big effort."

" He has come on big time since that run and from barrier 2 this week with Zac Butcher in the bike, he should be very hard to beat," Les said.

After talking to Les Purdon at length, one gets the impression that Blinding Light has quite a few more wins in him yet.

Harnesslink Media