Leap To Fame Photo by Dan Costello
HISTORY awaits local champion Leap To Fame and on so many levels in this Ladbrokes Inter Dominion series.
Grant Dixon’s six-year-old will become the richest stake-earner of all-time in this part of the world, eclipsing another great Queenslander Blacks A Fake, if he can win the $1 million pacing final at Albion Park on July 19.
And the betting says he’s almost a lock to do it.
Leap To Fame’s odds to win the final of $1.30 before the first round of heats are run tomorrow night (Saturday) is unheard of.
Ponder all the greats that have come before him and none have been so dominant going into the start of the sport’s most iconic and biggest event.
Most felt the great Kiwi stayer Lazarus was a “moral” at Gloucester Park in the 2017 series he won, but he started $2 in the final.
Two years earlier, the wayward but rampaging Lennytheshark proved a class above his rivals at Gloucester Park, but he still started at $2.10.
More recently, Ultimate Sniper stifled betting at $1.40 for the 2019 Auckland final, but many forget he was actually $7 before a heat was run.
You have to go back 20 years to one of the greatest of all Kiwis, Elsu, in the Auckland series of 2005 to find a horse anywhere near as short as Leap To Fame before a heat was run. He still started $1.55 when won all three heats and romped home in the final.
This is rarefied air and while you want to say it shouldn’t happen, Leap To Fame deserved to be this short.
If, or as many think, when he wins this final, anyone who doesn’t rate alongside any of the all-time greats is kidding themselves.
On any measure – prize money, winning strike rate, major wins, the way he does it and longevity – Leap To Fame is as good as any of them.
Even champion horseman Luke McCarthy, who trains and drives the defending Inter Dominion champion and main danger, Don Hugo, admits he faces an enormous task.
“The distance of the final is the thing. In shorter races, my guy can be too quick for Leap To Fame, but stretch out to a distance like 3157m and he is right in his sweet spot,” he said.
The trotting series is very different and holds most of the intrigue of the next 15 days.
It has rekindled the old Trans-Tasman rivalry the Inter Dominion – by its very name – was built.
The Kiwi hopes rest with the master and the apprentice – Oscar Bonavena the nine year-old and five-year-old Bet N Win.
The Aussies big gun is Arcee Phoenix, who beat the Kiwi on their own patch in the huge TAB Trot at Cambridge in April and looks to have gone to the next level.
His support crew is headed by the highly talented but enigmatic pair London To A Brick and Gus.
PHOTO: Dan Costello
