Ellen Tormey drove Hes No Romeo NZ to victory in the first race of the night.
Photo by
Megan Fisher
It had everything the big crowd had longed and hoped for even though the result was not expected by most trots fans.
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The Neatline Homes Shepparton Gold Cup on Saturday night at the Kialla Raceway turned into the epic battle it was billed to be between two of Australia’s best pacers Leap To Fame and Kingman.
Punters expected the Queenslander Leap To Fame may have been ready to reverse his record against the NSW trained flyer Kingman who had beaten him in their two previous showdowns.
But Kingman’s trainer driver Luke McCarthy wasn’t hearing any of it.
He succeeded in making Leap To Fame’s victory bid that much harder to attain by making the Grant Dixon trained and driven superstar work as hard as possible in the five horse field.
McCarthy led on Kingman from barrier one and for the first two laps thwarted ever bid Dixon made to get Leap To Fame to the front running position.
Dixon finally secured a sit behind the leader with a little over a lap and 1100 metres left to run in the gruelling 2690m marathon but when the crunch came between the champ and the heir apparent it was Kingman who stood tallest.
The Always Be Miki five-year-old horse ran final sectionals not even the great Leap To Fame could match, as hard as he tried.
Kingman pulled out a 55.7 last half and 27.2 final split in a record shattering breathtaking 1.53.7 mile rate performance which obliterated the previous track and race record of 1.55.6 set by the Belinda McCarthy trained Spirit Of St Louis when winning the cup in 2022.
Kingman had 2.9m to spare at the finishing post over Leap To Fame with the third place getter, the Elmore trained Our Luciano a whopping 43m away in third place.
No pacer has ever gone even close to running that time on the Shepparton track over that distance but Kingman did.
And it may have signalled the changing of the guard in the pecking order of Australia’s best pacers.
Certainly Leap To Fame lost no admirers with his performance given the hectic pace Kingman set and the extra work he had to do, facing the breeze for the first two laps.
Whatever transpires in the future is going to be enthralling and intriguing but the hundreds of trots goers who were at the meeting on Saturday night won’t forget the two-horse war for a long time.
And the pair could meet again as early as this Saturday night in the Ballarat Pacing Cup when they will face more rivals with more credentials than they contended with in the Shepparton Cup.
Shepparton Harness Racing Club officials were delighted with their cup meeting and large crowd.
The club’s general manager Rob Auber said the crowd was estimated to be 2500 strong.
‘’There was a great turn up,’’ Auber said.
Trots fans got to cheer home some district trained winners including the Shepparton Trotters Cup victor Im Bobby.
The Eddie Tappe trained trotter upstaged millionaire trotter and Inter Dominion winner Arcee Phoenix with a bold front running display to complete a double for his Congupna trainer who had also won the previous race, the Regional Trotters Cup final with his bonny mare Abbie, reined to victory by Shepparton’s Tasmyn Potter .
Master reinsman James Herbertson drove Im Bobby and was one of three winners he enjoyed success on at the meeting.
More on the cup in Gus Underwood’s Sulky Shorts column in Friday’s Shepparton News.
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