By Geoff Newling
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HOT Hit refuses to relax yet still continues to win for his Tamworth stable and Inverell owner.
The four-year-old gelding son of Dubleo was having his 11th race start in yesterday’s $15,000 Carlton Mid Winter Sprinter (1000m) at Tamworth and for a few strides Walcha mare Kalahari Princess threatened to spoil his day.
However, the gelding surged clear to register a neck win, his sixth success in a race where the Pat Farrell-trained Zero Cash had led and Mark Taylor’s talented chestnut mare, Kalahari Princess, had sat off in second.
Hot Hit was three wide behind them, refusing to settle but stalking the pair.
After flattening out for the run in Kalahari princess kicked strongly.
“We got interested for a few strides,” said Taylor.
“She’s come up well though.”
He is hoping to take her to Canterbury for a mid-week no metro wins race over 1100m in a few weeks.
“She had to run well enough in that to be worth going back down there,” Mark Taylor said.
“She did run well so we’ll go back down there. She’ll be down in the weights and with Rachael (Murray) claiming three, she’ll get in with 51kg.” The path for winner, Hot Hit, isn’t as clear.
“He might go back to town,” said co-owner Scott Williams.
“But he’s got to grow up a bit more and learn to relax.
“The two times we’ve taken him to town he’s just got involved in a speed duel both times.”
“If we could get him to relax we’d be down there like a shot,” Hot Hit’s exasperated trainer Mark Mason said.
“But there’s nothing much around for him
“Maybe the Moree Town Plate or something like that.
“Brisbane is a possibility but there’s nothing much there either. If we could get him to settle, that’d be a big plus.”
Finding the formula to settle Hot Hit in his races isn’t easy.
If Mark Mason could find that key a whole new racing world would be unlocked.
Robert Thompson partnered Hot Hit and the Cessnock jockey finished the day in a flurry, winning aboard Tom Ollerton’s first emergency Strongman and then Jeremy Sylvester’s One More Knight.
Strongman had won his only previous race at Quirindi about 18 months ago, Ollerton said. “Whenever anyone rides him in work they don’t want to ride anything else in a race,” Ollerton said.
“But when he gets out in a race it just doesn’t click for him.
“He’s had his chances before.”
However, the sublime riding skills of Robert Thompson might have been the major factor in the sonof More Than Ready breaking through.