Tuesday Digest

Back in Black

FOUR Good Form Black Bookers will take their place at Ballarat tonight, with two facing off in the Quaddie’s final leg.

Kicking off proceedings will be Darcy Tee, who Harness Racing Victoria form expert Michael Polster has marked at $6 after two brave efforts at Tabcorp Park.

Keayang Genius finished 4m in front of Darcy Tee last start and also caught the eye in his previous outing when nominated as a Good Form Black Booker at Terang.

He looks a solid each way proposition at $5.50 in the evening’s sixth event.

In the seventh race punters will have to split recent Black Bookers Narra Operative ($12) and Ashira Bromac ($2.10) with the latter horse rated as Polster’s top tip.

Cups begin

VICTORIAN harness fans can look forward to a bumper weekend ahead with Melton hosting two $20,000 features and Swan Hill staging their first ever Nyah Pacing Cup.

Bitobliss and Jaccka Clive are both dual-nominees for Melton’s Markovina FFA on Friday night and the Nyah Pacing Cup 24 hours later with Bitobliss most likely to target the latter race right now.

Multiple Country Cup winner Heza Trick has also nominated for both races while Melpark Major will continue his stellar season in the Markovina FFA along with star five-year-old Caribbean Blaster.

Australian Grand Prix winner I Didnt Do It headlines an all star field in the R C Freestone Trotters Cup at Tabcorp Park along with Don King, Mister Zion, Aleppo Sunrise and Retained.

Star King

KING Of Strathfield has become the sixth horse to qualify for March’s inaugural Great Southern Star by claiming the Darrell Alexander Memorial Trot final at Gold Coast last Saturday night.

A half-brother to New Zealand Trotters Derby and Breeders Crown winner Galleons Assassin, King Of Strathfield was a metropolitan maiden approaching the Group 2 race at Parklands Drive.

But now he will take on some of Australasia’s greatest squaregaiters, plus up to two northern hemisphere invaders in Harness Racing Victoria’s showpiece squaregaiting feature.

Other horses to make it through to the Great Southern Star via one of 20 qualification races are I Can Doosit, Charlemagne, Cold Sister, Elegant Image and Brief Glance.

An Elitlopp-style series where heats and final will be raced on the same Tabcorp Park programme, the Great Southern Star will carry $350,000 in stakemoney in its opening season.

Warrior Washakie

TRIPLE Treuer Memorial winner Washakie struck a blow for Australia’s aging pacers by adding the Group 2 Gold Coast Cup to his resume on Saturday night.

Incredibly, John McCarthy’s nine-year-old son of Badlands Hanover had finished third in the past three Gold Coast Cups against some of the finest pacers of the modern era.

In 2009/10 it was four-time inter Dominion winner Blacks A Fake who denied Washakie, while last year Smoken Up and Mr Feelgood narrowly beat him home.

But last weekend, one of the nation’s most respected pacers finally broke his Gold Coast maiden despite racing wide for the first 600m of the race.

While Washakie’s win, which put him within $50,000 of $1.5 million in prizemoney, was a popular one, few could deny that stablemate Terrorway was extremely unlucky in the run.