BUSH Rock likes Armidale but so does his trainer, Dubbo horseman Dar Lunn.
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That was evident by the way both celebrated winning at the Northern Tablelands track on Sunday.
Bush Rock cruised to a four and half length victory in Sunday’s $15,000 Superair Armidale Class 3 Handicap, his second win at the track and his third win overall.
Perfectly ridden by Ben Looker, who sat back in the early stages, Bush Rock pounced on his opponents coming down and around the Armidale turn and forged clear for an impressive win.
It prompted Armidale chairman Rod Watt to inquire of Lunn if he might consider returning for an Armidale Cup over the same distance next year.
Lunn isn’t looking that far ahead, yet.
He was just happy to have negotiated the five and a half hour trip with his lightly raced seven-year-old gelding son of Mossman.
“I’ve only had him the last six or seven starts,” Lunn said after Sunday’s win.
“He was a little bit stiff at Orange the other day (second to George’s Mistake) but he’s going well.”
The five and half hour trip home was going to be most enjoyable, he reckoned.
“When they perform like that it makes the trip worthwhile,” he said.
He is now looking at a race at Orange in “10 or 12 days’ time”.
While he was celebrating a long trip, Taree’s Ross Stitt made the trip from the opposite direction a happy one as well.
The Taree trainer lobbed with Flying Seba to win the first race of the day, the Piddington’s Armidale Fillies & Mares Maiden (1400m) in the last bound.
A disappointing chestnut mare, Flying Seba was never going to win until the final stride.
“She’s out of a half sister to Heavenly Glow,” Stitt said of his former Group 1 winning mare.
“But she’s been very disappointing. She used to be able to beat open company horses on the track as a young horse but just hasn’t come on. She can’t carry condition.”
The win helped ease the pain of a near miss in the Muswellbrook Cup with Shazza’s Bubbles on Melbourne Cup day.
The talented mare was only beaten in the last few strides on a heavy Muswellbrook track by Bettabet Red last Tuesday.
We had to give them 7.5kilos too,” Stitt recalled.
“She’s been very good this time but she might have to go to town next time. She’s a 90 benchmark rater now.”
After a metro start, she might then head towards the Mudgee Cup, Stitt said.
Another coastal trainer, Jenny Graham, also had success at Armidale when she won the feature race, the Tony Hewitt Memorial Spring Cup with Stradance and then made it a running double when Tom And Me won the East Armidale Store Pearl Perch Maiden (1100m).
A big gangly bay three-year-old, Tom And Me was having his fifth race start.
“He’s going to make a nice horse,” Graham said.
“We’ll take our time with him – he’s been a slow learner.”
Stradance’s win in the Tony Hewitt Memorial Spring Cup was the gelding’s third at his 13th start and his first since joining her Port Macquarie stable.