Down Under Muscles is one of Australia's most exciting young squaregaiters
The growing role of the Tabcorp Australasian Breeders Crown series as a breeding ground for champions of the future was further underlined with Down Under Muscles’ stunning victory in the $15,000 M&M Ryan Kilmore Trotters Cup on Sunday.
Having run second to Chris Lang’s brilliant young squaregaiter Let Me Thru in their four-year-old ABC final on August 22, in what was the seminal highlight of a day littered with them, Down Under Muscles has been a revelation since stepping up to open class this term.
Blessed with a heady combination of brutal high speed – which he displayed in his freakish Scotch Notch win at Tabcorp Park on October 1 – and sustained strength, Chris Alford’s son of Muscles Yankee was forced to display his full repertoire to take home the chocolates at Kilmore.
Sent out favourite at flip-of-the-coin odds from his 10-metre handicap, the gifted five-year-old settled well back after the start, with a host of largely unfancied runners - lamplighted by rank outsider, Gentle Image - controlling the 3150-metre stand start affair from the top.
Cruising through a 125.9-second lead time and 31.5-second first fraction, Gentle Image looked to stack up his rivals knowing the Cup’s handicapped horses would want to wait as long as possible before making their moves.
After a second split of 32.1 it was finally left to last-start winner and former boom juvenile, Danny Bouchea, to circumnavigate the field and inject some speed into the race, and as they wound off the back straight the final time it fleetingly appeared his spontaneous move may have been a winning one.
But as the 10-strong set of squaregaiters straightened for home and Alford was able to extricate his electric trotter from a three-wide trail and into the clear, the race was over in the blink of an eye.
Recording final splits of 28.5 and 30.1 to complete a 2:06.4 mile rate, Down Under Muscles was untroubled at the line to triumph by 3 metres from the incredibly courageous Gentle Image -who found his second wind over the final 50 metres – while race backmarker Don King was anything but disgraced a further 2.5 metres astern in third.
The rank disappointment of the race was Lance Justice’s rejuvenated squaregaiter Earl of Mot, who never recovered from a poor beginning and finished more than 20 metres from the winner in second last position.
Down Under Muscles is now the winner of 15 from just 26 starts and looms, along with his Breeders Crown conqueror Let Me Thru, as the heirs apparent to Sundons Gift’s Australasian trotting throne.
