Arber will be hard to beat on Sunday.
Arber looks hard to beat in Sunday’s Wangaratta Stock Foods and Farm Supplies 2014 Pacing Cup.
The Tim Bolitho-trained pacer takes the strongest form into the $12,275 race over 2210m and has drawn a plum barrier.
Arber will start from four on the front row and, with the two horses drawn inside him after the scratching of pole-marker Born Again Sassy not traditionally fast starters, the lead looks up for grabs for the Anakie seven-year-old.
Bolitho tipped David Aiken-trained Smudge Bromac and Jayne Davies-trained All I Can Be as the likely main dangers on Sunday.
“Smudge Bromac is the one that I think might work around them,” he said.
“All I Can Be hasn’t started for 12 months but he’s been trialling. I think he’s had four or five trials before this race.
“But I think we’ve got the advantage over those horses with our draw. My bloke has shown good speed off the mobile and he’ll be strong at the finish.”
Arber has enjoyed space between his races this campaign, Bolitho saying while the horse has been “up for a while”, he’s been “raced sparingly”.
The trainer has earmarked his hometown Corio Waste Management Geelong Pacing Cup (on Saturday, March 29) as a race he would like to contest.
“It’d be fantastic to win the Geelong Cup because I’m on the committee there and the people involved in the horse are Geelong people. It would be fantastic.”
Arber may start in the Echuca Pacing Cup on Friday, March 21, as a lead-up to the Geelong Group 3 feature.
Last time out in the Terang Co-Op Pacing Cup, Arber finished fourth of six beaten 3.3m by smart Dean Braun-trained Im Corzin Terror and just a metre or so behind eventual Menangle Group 1 winner Abettorpunt.
All I Can Be is an intriguing proposition on Sunday.
The son of Art Major, bred by Davies and raced by the trainer along with AFL coaches Nathan Buckley and Brenton Sanderson, has won 10 of his 21 career starts and finished hard on the back of Caribbean Blaster in a recent trial.
The inside-back-row draw on Sunday on the tight Wangaratta track makes his job tougher, but genius driver Chris Alford always seems to find a way to make things work.
Davies said she was looking forward to seeing how All I Can Be would go first-up.
“He’s going good. The draw makes it a bit hard but he’s going nice enough. He ran second to Caribbean Blaster in a trial and never had the plugs pulled on him, so he’s going well enough.”
Davies said with the AFL season just around the corner it was unlikely the Collingwood and Adelaide coaches would be able to attend Wangaratta, but she said they enjoyed their association with the horse.
As for long-term plans for All I Can Be this time in, Davies says there aren’t any.
“We’ll just see how he goes,” she said.
