Rata gets game win

Rata (Muscle Mass) provided Gore trainer Gay McClymont with her first winner in nine years when she narrowly won at the Wyndham Harness Racing Club’s meeting at Cromwell yesterday.

Over the thirty years she’s held a licence, McClymont has always had a small number of trotters in training and her seventeen winners have all been trotters.

Her first winner was Saperfluous which was by Auckland Cup winner Sapling (Young Charles). Sapling was bred and raced by the late George Cruickshank and McClymont’s father Lionel Given. 

He won twenty two races including the Northern Derby, the New Zealand Messenger, the Easter Cup and the Auckland Cup and he also had some success at stud.

Sapling’s dam Haakondahl (Lumber Dream) is the fifth dam of Rata while Rata’s mother Larix (Safely Kept) won ten races for McClymont including the 2011 Group Three Four Year Old Trotters Championship at Addington.

“That was a big thrill. It was a bit of a search mission. We wanted to compare ourselves with everyone else in the country,” McClymont said. 

Tamarix (Double Century) the dam of Larix was dual gaited so that’s when the trotters began arriving.

“She could really pace as a three year old and ran a half in 56 at the workouts and we thought we had a nice little Oaks filly. She never once tried at the races pacing. One day I threw her hopples away and she qualified a few weeks later.”

Tamarix won five races as a trotter and as a broodmare has left winners Larix, Given (Sundon), Larch (Sundon) and Ash (The Pres).

Rata is Larix’s first live foal. 

“As a youngster Rata was a bit hocky so I didn’t press her as a three year old. I had her going well last season (but she got) sore and went a bit off. She’s been vetted and we couldn’t really find out where the problem was.” 

Larix’s second foal Styrax (Creatine) from a handful of starts has been placed three times, while the mare’s third foal Fir (Creatine) is a yearling filly.

It’s taken a while to get the progeny of Larix to the races as she lost her first foal and has missed getting in foal a number of times.

“When Styrax was born Larix ruptured her stomach and Ross Jones did marvellously keeping them both alive. He said at one stage ‘what do you want, to keep the foal or the mare?’ I told him the mare. He rang up one day and told me that I had a foal and my heart dropped thinking I’d lost the mare. Ross waited a minute and then said you’ve got the mare as well. The bugger.”

The good news is the Larix has had a positive test to Majestic Son.

“The family has been a bit hit and miss.” 

In yesterday’s race driver Craig Ferguson got the five year old to begin well before taking up a trailing position. At the top of the straight Judicate (Father Patrick) and Rata cut away from the pack with Rata getting the decision by a head with five lengths back to the third horse. 

RATA REPLAY

Gay has had recent health issues and she and her husband Nick who has recently retired from driving for Fonterra, have had to lease the farm.

“We got rid of the sheep and kept the horses, and I’m not sure if that’s the right way round. There’s more work in the horses than there is in the sheep.”

And as for the tree theme? It was started by George Cruickshank who had an interest in the timber business and that’s how Haakondahl, being by Lumber Dream, got her name. Haakon Dahl (two separate words) is a table used to measure round timber in cubic metres.

For complete race results, click here.

by Bruce Stewart, for Harnesslink