And although its only early days yet their latest debutant Our Bad Ossie couldn’t have been more impressive disposing of a field of two-year-old rivals at Shepparton on Tuesday night.
Settled midfield in the run by Bartley, Our Bad Ossie left his rivals standing at the business end of the race with nearly 15m to spare over the runner-up, the outsider, Rock Phone, with Team Turnbull's Alfresco filling the minor placing.
A son of Life Sign, Our Bad Ossie is out of the Artplace mare Trulyawork Of Art who ran two thirds in a brief 10-race career.
But she has been a super broodmare in the breeding barn with nine other winners.
Two of these were Australian winners, Authentic Stride, who won five of 15 starts for the McCarthys, and Big Bad Bruce, a winner of two and placed six times in nine starts.
But it was in America where Trulyawork Of Art made her mark as a broodmare.
Among her winning progeny were Big Bad John, a winner of $1.559 million, and Western Art Work, Tiz A Masterpiece, now a successful sire, and Not Gunner Lie.
They were all by Western Hanover and accumulated $200,000-plus in prizemoney earnings.
Our Bad Ossie was bought at the yearling sales, by his trainers O’Dongohue and Bartley, former local studmaster Ross Gange and Ray Chaplin.
O’Donoghue said Our Bad Ossie was a pacer with a lot talent and would be nursed along quietly.
‘‘We weren’t going to race him as a two-year-old, but he went good in a couple of trials, so we decided to give him this run and then turn him out which we have done,” O’Donoghue said.
O’Donoghue and Bartley weren’t the only district trainers to strike gold at this week’s Shepparton meeting.
Isabel Walsh, coming off a high of producing 100/1 winner Repelling in Vicbred a sem-final heat at Melton the previous week, produced consistent Do Not Surrender for his second win at his past three starts.
Young reinsman Cody Crossland utilised the four-year-old Bettors Delight gelding’s poleline draw and, early speed, to lead throughout over the 1690m trip in 1:56.5 mile rate time to hold off serious challengers from the favourite Talent Agent and the consistent Graham Lyon-prepared Jets Art.
It was a leg of a winning driving double for Crossland who had saluted on Bee Gee See, trained by his grandfather Brian, earlier in the program.
The fairer sex made their presence felt at this week’s meeting.
Apart from Walsh’s win with Do Not Surrender, district trainers Sonya Maher and Caitlin Guppy produced winners in Aveiro and Mynameisruby, who both scored at nice odds, respectively.
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