Top trotter Bolt For Brilliance retired

One of the great trotters of recent years Bolt For Brilliance (Muscle Hill) has been retired, leaving harness racing fans wondering what might have been.

Trainer Tony Herlihy made the decision on Tuesday after veterinary examinations suggested the breathing issues that had been bothering Bolt For Brilliance for much of the last year were not getting better.

“They started to show up around Dominion time last year and the latest examinations suggest they will get worse if we press on with him,” says Herlihy.

“He was only back down to trotting 3:30 for 2400m and his throat was going to be put under a lot more pressure to get back to the trials and races.

“I spoke with both Ivan (Bridge) and Barbara (Hunter, both vets) and while we could have done a tie-back operation Ivan suggested they haven’t had great success with those, especially on older horses.

“I don’t want to put him through that so he will be retired.”

Herlihy will share the disappointment of trotting fans as at his best Bolt For Brilliance was a very special horse.

Good enough to win the Harness Jewels at two, and returned to repeat that as a four-year-old, both times beating his arch rival Muscle Mountain.

In between he was robbed of Derby success as a three-year-old as those classics were lost to the Covid shutdown in 2020 but he still won both the Sales Series and Sires’ Stakes in blistering times.

His four-year-old season saw him step against Sundees Son and Muscle Mountain in what was a way too short-lived golden era in New Zealand trotting.

Bolt For Brilliance beat both but his greatest moment came in the 2022 Rowe Cup when he bolted away from Temporale and Sundees Son in an Alexandra Park track record 4:1.2.

On that night, as he strode nearly six lengths clear, almost anything seemed possible for Bolt For Brilliance.

A lung infection cost him showing his best at Cup week later that year but he still went to the Inter Dominions in Victoria as a hot favourite and bolted away on the first night, the final looking his for the taking.

A luckless second followed before in his final heat he almost ran down the then little-known Victorian trotter Just Believe only to return to the stables lame.

Bolt had fractured a pedal bone and spent nine months away from the track as Just Believe went on to win the Interdom Final and start down the road to becoming a true champion.

Bolt For Brilliance returned last October with a national record win at Alexandra Park just to remind us all how good he really is but the breathing issues started soon after and his last race was his fourth in the Dominion last November.

He retires the winner of 21 of his 50 starts and 17 placings, that win column would have been so much longer had it not been for racing three other superstars, not to mention Oscar Bonaneva and Majestic Man.

“He was a wonderful horse and that Rowe Cup win, his Jewels and some of those three-year-old wins were very special,” said Herlihy.

“He is one of the best I have had and a lovely horse to deal with. Horses like him don’t come along very often.”

by Michael Guerin, for Harness Racing New Zealand