Taranaki twin daring to dream big with TAB Trot Slot Sweepstake

Taranaki harness racing enthusiast, Costa Ellis, got the shock of his life when attending a formal function for his professional trade last Thursday night when his sweepstake ticket was pulled as one of the eight lucky participants with a chance to win $50,000.

Only hours earlier had Ellis learned he was one of the ten sweepstake ticket winners from the Facebook Page, Track Chat, with Harnesslink giving its administrator Jo Stevens the opportunity to reward her loyal followers with a chance to strike it big.

The New Plymouth man said he was chuffed to see he was in with a shot, bit never gave it much consideration after that as he went off to tend to business with an after hours plumbing function.

“I was at a young plumbers competition and my phone went off and it was a message from Jo (Stevens) saying my number had been pulled out in the sweepstake by the Cambridge team,” he said.

“It was a bit of a shock to the system really, it’s quite a unique prize to win. The guys there were all really excited for me and I had a few messages and phone calls from other people congratulating me and it was all a bit of a blur the rest of the night,” he laughed.

Ellis is deeply entrenched in the local Taranaki harness racing community having a stable hand license which allows him to help his twin-brother Brodie train a small team of five horses.

The twins who are both on the committee of the Hawera Harness Racing Club have also played an integral role in ensuring the next generation in the local community are afforded the chance to enter the sport having established and maintained Kids Cartz racing in the region.

“Our passion for the industry started back when we were around 12 years old, when my late Great Uncle Keith Chittenden was training horses. He had some really nice trotters like Palais Royal (Continentalman), Bon Ton Cherie (Sundon) and Arbee (Sundon).

“That’s where my brother Brodie and I got our passion for the sport from, spending our weekends at the barn with Uncle Keith. He was the one who got Kidz Carts off the ground and we have spent the last couple of years ticking that aspect over for the kids in the community” he said.

Chittenden passed away in his home town of Hawera at the age of 66 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. He was a Taranaki stalwart not just in the harness racing community having trained 42 winners between 1977 and 2017 but also a respected club cricketer in the region.

While the 26-year-old twins haven’t got the cricketing bug from Uncle Keith, they have without a shadow of a doubt picked up his love for harness racing and few would be more deserving of a chance to win a prize like the TAB Trot Sweepstake.

“It’s just a hobby for both of us, Brodie runs his own car valet business and I’m a plumber/gas fitter which gives us the freedom to do the horses in the morning before buggering off to work for the rest of the day.

“Most of our team at the moment are young stock, but we have one we like called Armed Jaffa, a five-year-old by Auckland Reactor out of a mare called Pomis Arms (Beach Towel). He qualified really nicely 11 months ago before he did a tendon and we like him a lot. He is on the way back up and will start fast working very shortly.

“We have a couple of Creatine youngsters that we have a bit of time for and a Locharburn filly who won a two-horse workout a while ago, she is a bit of a work in progress at the moment,” he said.

Ellis’ brother is still searching for that elusive breakthrough training success but came close last season when beaten by a head at Cambridge Raceway with the Sportswriter gelding, Hampton, who paid a juicy $7.60 on the tote for his place-bearing dividend.

He is knocking on the door however and there is a serendipitous connection between the twins and the avenue in which they won their shot at $50,000 this Friday night.

“Jo Stevens has always been a phone call away in terms of helping us out, and Brodie has spent some time up there with her and her fiancé Dylan at Rogie’s barn and they have been really helpful to him and his training career with advice along the way.

“We’ve always been big followers of Harnesslink and enjoy watching racing from all over the world which is the good thing about that platform in that it helps us keep up to date with what’s going on. It’s always good to see interesting stories pop up whether it’s local racing or something overseas, I just love harness racing and love following it wherever it happens to be,” he said.

Having secured the opportunity to run for $50,000 in the TAB Trot Slot, Ellis still had to endure four more sleeps before he would be informed which trotter carried his hopes with contestants being assigned a runner at the official barrier draw conducted on Trackside on Monday night.

As we know the Kiwi runners didn’t fare well in the draws with the Australian hopefuls drawing the first four barriers behind the mobile, but Ellis’ name hadn’t appeared in the first six names read and was left with a 50/50 chance of securing the lead New Zealand hopes in Oscar Bonavena or Muscle Mountain.

“I couldn’t believe it to be fair, especially when my name was still in the hat and the numbers were whittling down. As far as I was concerned, they were the two that I wanted to be on being locally trained and Group One performers.

“I was pretty happy to get a horse like Oscar Bonavena and have a legend like Mark Purdon train and drive the horse you have running for $50,000, it doesn’t get much better than that.

“We will be there on Friday and hopefully if we get some of the spoils it will be a bit of a dusty Saturday. I have never been to the Night of Champions meeting at Cambridge before so we are looking forward to driving up and being a part of the atmosphere and it should be a great night regardless” he said.

Despite drawing as the only runner on the second line, Oscar Bonavena showed last Thursday he was back to his brilliant best when easily downing Queen Elida (Love You) in the G2 Smith & McKenzie Flying Mobile Trot.

He will have an opportunity to race to his strengths and we all know if saved for one run how potent the son of Majestic Son can be. The punters agree and the Mark and Nathan Purdon trained entire has firmed into $9 from an opening quote of $11. Ellis will secure a minimum of $3000 for 5th through 8th placed finish, however he is daring to dream a little bigger with some aspirations beyond Friday night for how he would spend any royalties as a result of the sweepstake.

“I want to get into the property market and buy myself a property in the near future. But we also want to build up some nice stock around us and had planned to head back to the weanling sale to secure another one or two and any winnings from Friday night will certainly help the budget,” he laughed.

“We have an Always B Miki filly we bought from the weanling sale last year and she is just awesome, we haven’t done much with her but she is a lovely-natured filly and has given us the confidence to head back down that route,” he said.

by Brad Reid, for Harnesslink