Eva Longoria – lights, camera, action

Canterbury harness racing trainer Paul Nairn looks to have uncovered another smart trotter in Head Em Up (Waterloo Sunset). 

On Friday night at Addington after breaking at the start of his race, the two year old had to sit parked until he eventually got cover inside the last 800 metres. Nairn got him running three wide before the home straight and he let down like a good horse to beat favourite The River Boy (Creatine) by a length and a quarter.  

HEAD EM UP REPLAY

The black gelding is out of unraced mare Eva Longoria (Love You) a daughter of So Long Eden (Penrod Eden) which won sixteen races – twelve for Joy Millar, three for Dave Gibbons and one for Roy and Barry Purdon. 

Her best win was in the 1995 Rowe Cup where she beat Call Me Now (Roydon Boy) trained by Nairn. Among the beaten bunch were David Moss, Idle Scott, Night Allowance and Diamond Field. 

She also won an Ordeal Cup, ran second in the 1995 New Zealand Trotting Championship and second in the Ashburton Flying Mile. 

She was owned for the majority of her career by Joy Millar but for the last handful of her starts including the Rowe Cup, Canterbury vet Bill Bishop had a share in her. 

“I bought So Long Eden from Joy for $250. Joy had had three foals out of her, and I had four and none of them were any good,” Invercargill breeder Roy Cleaver said.  

Eva Longoria was her last foal. “She wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for Curly Thomas. She ate a bit of bailage wrap as a weanling and had to have a major operation and Curly paid for it. He’s a top man. After that she became a bit of a pet and didn’t have any fight in her,” Cleaver said when asked why Eva Longoria never raced. 

Head Em Up’s Sire Waterloo Sunset (Sundon) won seven races for Nairn and at stud has left eighteen foals for five winners. They are Bella Button (8), Full Of Hope (6), Gil Favor (7), Tu Tangata (3) and Head Em Up (1). 

“We watched him all the way through and liked him. I’m very poor (laughter) and I couldn’t afford the vet fees so Paul suggested that we go foal for foal.” 

Cleaver has a full sister to Head Em Up which is a chestnut. 

“She’s a weanling who’s been broken into the cart. The mare missed to Pastor Stephen so she’s going back to Waterloo Sunset.” 

Savage Garden (Continentalman) is another of So Long Eden’s foals and to date has left one foal -Truelymadlydeeply (Repeat Love) which qualified but didn’t race and Carol Sinclair has bred one foal out of her. He’s a two year old also by Waterloo Sunset and is in work for Invercargill trainer Wayne Adams.  

Eva Longoria is named after the American actress best known for her role in The Young and the Restless and Desperate Housewives. 

For complete race results, click here.

by Bruce Stewart, for Harnesslink