GAVIN Groth enjoyed a first over Christmas and hopes that "holiday" morphs into success at upcoming meetings at Inverell Cup day, home track Gunnedah and Mudgee.
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The Gunnedah trainer starts Epic Decision in Wednesday's $24,000 Local Appliance Rentals Inverell Shorts (1010m) and Redemption Road in the $37,000 XXXX Gold 2020 Inverell Cup (1400m).
On Monday he has Danspur, Malzoom and Davor lining up at Riverside Racecourse, Gunnedah before Red Liberty and Annie's Street race at Mudgee on Tuesday, providing Red Liberty, an emergency for the Inverell Cup, doesn't get a run at Inverell.
It's a busy little run far removed from the more gentle pace over Christmas where the Groth stable had two days off.
"We had a lovely Christmas with all the family," Groth said.
"I was lucky enough that all our horses were well enough into their campaigns."
"We were able to plan this a couple of months ago on the calendar and I was able to give the staff time off and I just looked after the horses with a couple of the family."
He's hoping that a relaxing couple of days was also helpful for all his horses and has them in positive frames of mind for some nice races.
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Epic Decision and Redemption Road, he hopes and believes, will run well at Inverell.
"Epic Decision ran fourth (to Dylan's Luck) in last year's Shorts and won there the year before (in a Class 3 1200m)," he said.
"Redemption Road is drawn well and weighted well in the Cup."
He's only had the five-year-old gelding son of Dane Shadow for two starts but said he has done well and hopes he can add to his three wins in 18 starts.
"Never won a Cup," he added.
"Don't know that I've had that many runners in it."
Gunnedah Jockey Club received 138 nominations for next Monday's seven-race TAB meeting, the highlight being a benchmark 58 handicap over 1000m that attracted 22 nominations.
That included last start winners Fourth Protocol (Neville McCarthy), Hey Dude (Zach Hatch) and Swoop (Peter Sinclair).
Fourth Protocol won at Gunnedah on December 7 for his Narrabri trainer while Hey Dude also saluted at Gunnedah on December 17 for his young footballing trainer Zach Hatch.
Swoop won at Inverell on Boxing Day and in his only start at Gunnedah was second to stablemate Palace Street back in late October.
