Don Hugo winning the 2025 Miracle Mile
IT is game on in the race for this year’s Australian Grand Circuit champion title.
After two fascinating legs, it is clear Leap To Fame will have a real battle to win the crown for a third successive season.
King Of Swing won three successive Grand Circuit titles preceding Leap To Fame’s wins in the past two seasons.
Although winless in the first two legs, Leap To Fame’s two second placings still give him a share of the lead on 120 points with Swayzee, who followed his Hunter Cup win with a luckless fourth in the Miracle Mile.
The emergence of Don Hugo has an exciting new flavour to the Grand Circuit tussle.
Luke McCarthy’s five-year-old improved on a slightly disappointing fifth in the Hunter Cup to lead throughout and stave-off Leap To Fame in a stirring Miracle Mile last Saturday night at Menangle.
Despite already having won a TAB Eureka and Inter Dominion final, the Miracle Mile win where he beat Leap To Fame and Swayzee for the first time, really signalled Don Hugo’s arrival in the big league.
“I didn’t read too much into the Hunter Cup, he just wasn’t the horse I know he is that night for some reason,” McCarthy said. “He felt so much better Inter Dominion time and winning his (Miracle Mile) qualifier, I was confident he was up to the challenge in the Miracle Mile.
“I know Leap To Fame had to do the work and he’s a great horse, but I always felt like I was holding him and Don Hugo is a fighter, he’d have kept finding more if Leap To Fame had come at him again.
“I thought he could do it and now he has, it gives you real confidence going into the rest of the big races this season.”
Don Hugo’s snared 100 points for the win and, combined with the 10 points for his fifth in the Hunter Cup, he is right on the heels of Leap To Fame and Swayzee on the Grand Circuit table with 110 points.
It’s a gap away to emerging Kiwi pacer Tact McLeod, who has 60 points for his fourth in the Hunter Cup and third in the Miracle Mile.
Don Hugo and Swayzee will get the chance to overtake Leap To Fame in the next leg of the Grand Circuit, the $300,000 Group 1 Fremantle Cup at Gloucester Park on May 2. Leap To Fame won’t contest the race.
The next time the trio is expected to clash is the $1mil Brisbane Inter Dominion final on July 19.
2025 Grand Circuit Points
PHOTO: Club Menangle/Pacepix
