It might sound a big call, but of the six wins from 37 starts in the six-year-old gelding’s career, four have been at his home track — including Monday’s meeting where he blitzed a field of 11 to win the $22,000 Rangedale Drainage and Industrial Services handicap over 1606m by five lengths being eased down.
His win in the eighth and last of the day was long overdue — until then punters and visitors might have assumed it wasn’t the Benalla races they were watching.
Races one, two and six went to Bundoora-based trainer John McArdle and jockey Jamie Mott and Paddy Payne (Plumpton based) and his gun hoop Billy Egan landed a double in races four and five.
Then in the lucky last it was like déjà vu all over again.
In race eight at the Benalla Gold Cup meeting, trainer Russell Osborne and If You Will were the only local winners of the day and they did it again on Monday.
Speaking pre-race, Osborne admitted he could never be sure which If You Will would turn up on the day.
He said the six-year-old gelding was a difficult horse to train and in a race could sense when a jockey might have given up on him and responded accordingly.
After beating home a field of 13 over the mile on Cup Day on September 27, If You Will went to Ballarat on October 11 for a BM64 mile and finished stone cold last of 11.
So Osborne brought him back to his home track and promptly declared the horse was the best he has had him looking.
‘‘In the mounting yard he looked bloody super,’’ Osborne said.
‘‘Today the ideal thing would be to sneak him a fraction further forward of where he normally sits, but I think his ideal thing is to drop out and run home.
‘‘But I think the track is favouring the leaders today, so he will have his work cut out.’’
As it turned out, If You Will delivered a bit of both, running midfield for most of the journey along the back and coming onto the turn.
But as they started coming off the turn into the home straight, jockey Ethan Brown set his ride alight and they tore around the leading bunch four and five wide as if they were standing still.
By the 200m he was in front and then Brown just let him go and he bolted away from the rest of the field to win by five lengths eased down.
Amazingly, for a horse with such a strong home record, it paid a whopping $10.60 for the win and lifted his earnings to $121,000.
Even the race caller recognised If You Will’s iron grip on his home track and declared if they could get a $500,000 race to Benalla no-one would be able to beat him.
‘‘Apart from that bad run (in Ballarat) we couldn’t be happier with the way the horse has been travelling this time in,’’ Osborne said after the race.
‘‘I think he will win another 64, we’ve just got to pick the right races — Benalla could put on a 64 race in a fortnight and I reckon we might not be far away.’’
Brown said he had been a bit up in the air after seeing that Ballarat run, but was not overwhelmed because he knew how much If You Will loves his home track.
He said they had a ‘‘nice enough run in transit’’ to help set the race up.
‘‘That last start (in Ballarat) didn’t really suit him the way it was run, and he gave it up, he’s funny like that this horse,’’ Brown said.
‘‘Today I tried to keep positive and got stuck into him coming around the corner and he responded.’’
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