Latest news with #harnessracing
News.com.au
3 days ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Champion pacer Leap To Fame to switch to standing-start racing at Albion Park on Saturday night
Champion pacer Leap To Fame will take a surprise step right outside his comfort zone at Albion Park on Saturday night. For just the second time in more than four years and 65 race starts, Leap To Fame will switch from mobile start to standing-start racing. His only other standing-start race was on June 8 last year when Leap To Fame came off a 20m handicap to emphatically win the Flashing Red Discretionary at Albion Park over 2647m. The six-year-old's task will be even harder this week off the maximum 30m handicap and the race being over the shorter 2138m trip. Despite Leap To Fame winning first-up from a break at Albion Park last Saturday night, his trainer-driver Grant Dixon was moved to back him up quickly. • PUNT LIKE A PRO: Become a Racenet iQ member and get expert tips – with fully transparent return on investment statistics – from Racenet's team of professional punters at our Pro Tips section. SUBSCRIBE NOW! 'It was a bit hard to assess things on such a wet track, but I felt he should have won a bit easier,' he said. 'Trista I felt he could do with another two races before the Inter Dominion starts and that meant we really had to back him up this week. 'There was also the option of a mobile sprint race, but there are a few reasons we opted for the stand. 'He will get more conditioning from a race like this stand, especially over 2138m. Big surprise in the fields for this Saturday night- Jun 7 Leap To Fame will start in Race 6- a standing start handicap over 2138m. From 30m ðŸ'€ ðŸ'€ — The Creek (@TheCreekAlbion) June 2, 2025 'And we are thinking about taking him to the NZ Cup later in the year, which is a standing start and this could be one of the last suitable opportunities we get to show him the (standing start) tapes and see how he handles it. 'The Flashing Red and Redcliffe Cups are coming, but he'll get 30m in both of those. The Flashing Red will be a lot stronger than this week's race and Redcliffe isn't really a suitable race for him.' In Awe. LEAP TO FAME with one of his best ever tonight in The Race by @betcha_nz. He eyeballed his most recent foe, Don Hugo then put him, and the rest, to the sword to once again prove who's boss in the pacing world ðŸ'° — RaceQ (@RaceQLD) April 4, 2025 Dixon said racing again this week meant Leap To Fame could return to mobile start racing for his final lead-up race on June 21. 'Then he'll have had the three weeks and get a two-week gap before the first round of (Inter Dominion) heats (July 5),' Dixon said. Dixon felt Leap To Fame, who won narrowly but impressively first-up at Albion Park last Saturday night, needed more racing before the Inter Dominion starts on July 5. Leap To Fame makes it career win 51 and 34 at The Creek to take out The Somerset Farms Avonnova Open defeating Wisper A Secret — The Creek (@TheCreekAlbion) May 31, 2025 'I thought he should've won a bit easier and that he'd need two more runs, not just one, before the heats. 'That really meant we had to back-up this week and it made more sense on a few levels to go to this (standing start) race rather than a 1660m mobile. This will be a better conditioning run. 'It means he can run this week, have two weeks to his third run back and then another two weeks before the first round of heats.' THE CHAMP GOES BACK-TO-BACK! Another successful raid by the Queenslanders Grant Dixon and Leap To Fame, who secure a second-straight victory in the Decron Cranbourne Gold Cup! — The Trots (@TheTrotsComAu) February 8, 2025 Less than an hour after Leap To Fame steps out, his major Brisbane Inter Dominion rival Don Hugo will return from a let-up in the seventh race at Menangle on Saturday night. Don Hugo upset Leap To Fame in the Miracle Mile on March 8, but the latter turned the tables with a powerhouse win when they last met in the $1 million Race by betcha at Cambridge on April 4. They have clashed three times and Leap To Fame leads 2-1. @ClubMenangle — SKY Racing (@SkyRacingAU) March 8, 2025
News.com.au
29-05-2025
- General
- News.com.au
Harness racing: Chris Lang welcomes return of stable star Ollivici after officially becoming a legend
It has been a huge week for training great Chris Lang. The one-time 'King of Trotting' in Australia was inducted as a Caduceus Club 'Living Legend' on Monday night and his stable star Ollivici returns from an injury-enforced lay-off at Melton on Saturday night. The 65-year-old, who has trained 38 Group 1 winners in Australia and driven 22, said he was surprised and humbled with his Living Legend award. 'My partner (Sonia Mahar) did a great job keeping it a secret. I didn't even know where we were going until we turned up at Melton, saw a few of my old mates arriving and then I twigged something was up,' Lang said. 'It was a very pleasant surprise and a real honour.' Lang is the third member of one of harness racing's greatest families to be afforded Living Legend status. Previously his late father, Graeme (1998) and brother Gavin (2013), were inducted. Lang's long list of stars include: Sundons Gift, Skyvalley, Let Me Thru, National Interest, Kyvalley Road and Jauriol. He trained three successive Inter Dominion trotting final winners with Galleons Sunset (2008) and Sundons Gift (2009 and '10). In a couple of weeks, Lang, who now trains a select team in partnership with Sonia Mahar, will head to Brisbane to chase his fourth Inter Dominion. Ollivici is a trotter Lang has always felt has feature-race talent and he's more than hinted at it with 18 wins, 17 placings and almost $300,000. The gelding went to the last Brisbane Inter Dominion in late 2023 and made a splash with two wins a second in his three heats, but ran below his best when seventh in the final behind the great Just Believe. An operation to remove a bone chip in a front fetlock has kept Ollivici away from the track since he ran third at Melton on December 14, last year. 'It's a deliberately long and slow build-up with our eye on Brisbane again,' Lang said. 'He had his third trial at Melton on Monday and we've asked a bit more of him each time. He hit the line well, made up a length on Callmethebreeze (a star trotter) and finished alongside him.' Ollivici will start from gate nine in Saturday night's 2240m Aldebaran Park Trotters' free-for-all at Melton. 'It's a starting point and we'll get more racing into him before the Inter Dominion starts,' Lang said. Much of that lead-up racing could be in Brisbane. 'We're thinking of going up early. There's racing options for him at Albion Park on June 14 and 21 and the week after that is the Redcliffe Trotters' Cup then the Inter heats starts on July 5,' Lang said. 'Given his long time out, we'd like to get him up there early to really settle in and get some racing under his belt. Lang is looking to take emerging three-year-old trotter Farrokh north with Ollivici. 'He's a Q-bred (Queensland-bred) so there are some good bonuses up there for him. He won his last start at Maryborough (November 20) and is almost ready to head back to the races,' Lang said.
CBC
27-05-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Owner of 2-time P.E.I. champion calls doping allegations against horse trainer 'nauseating'
Social Sharing The owner of the horse that won Atlantic Canada's most prestigious harness racing title in each of the past two years is speaking out against his former trainer, who's embroiled in a drug scandal. Mark Ford is no stranger to harness racing in Prince Edward Island and across North America. The U.S.-based horseman owns Covered Bridge, winner of the Gold Cup and Saucer finals in both 2023 and 2024. The horse's trainer, Jeff Gillis, was recently suspended from his work for 10 years by racing commissions in Ontario and Atlantic Canada after it was revealed he was part of an investigation into illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Ford told CBC News he's been a client of Gillis for many years, and he was "very upset and disappointed" to learn about his alleged activities. "There's no explaining any of the actions. I knew nothing about it," Ford said from his training facility in upstate New York on Tuesday. "I was dumbfounded and it puts me in a very embarrassing situation…. It's nauseating, it really is." Gillis was part of an investigation led by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, which saw 27 horse trainers, veterinarians and others being charged "with offences relating to the systematic shipment and administration of illegal performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) to racehorses competing across multiple jurisdictions." Based in the Guelph, Ont. area, Gillis is a successful trainer whose stables have won millions in purses over the years, according to his biography on the Woodbine website. But the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) has said records show Gillis purchased illegal drugs, including "a substance held out to be an illegal, blood-boosting synthetic erythropoietin," from U.S.-based veterinarian Seth Fishman. Fishman was sentenced to 11 years in prison in July 2022 for making "untestable" performance enhancing drugs, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the southern district of New York said on its website. 'No monkey business' Ford said Tuesday that most people in the harness-racing community knew of the investigation into Fishman's dealings, but said he learned of Gillis's alleged involvement only when AGCO announced this week that it was issuing its suspension. "It's just sickening, and it's even more sickening when it hits this close to home," Ford said. The AGCO suspension states that any horses that were trained by Gillis would be ineligible to race, but can be sold or released to another trainer in good standing with the commission. Ford said he believes Covered Bridge would fall into that category, and stressed that the horse never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs following his two Gold Cup wins or at any other time. Despite the fact that Fishman's drugs are "untestable," Ford said elite horses like Covered Bridge wouldn't have been able to sustain racing on performance enhancers for as long as he did. "They raced every week at high-end levels for years. I mean, generally, juiced-up horses don't do that," he said.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Award-winning horse trainer suspended, fined in blood-doping case
A man who trained the winner of the last two Gold Cup and Saucer races in P.E.I. is facing a 10-year suspension from harness racing. Jeffrey Gillis was part of an FBI investigation that revealed he was buying performance-enhancing drugs and giving them to horses. CBC's Wayne Thibodeau has more.
CBC
26-05-2025
- Sport
- CBC
Award-winning horse trainer suspended, fined in blood-doping case
A man who trained the winner of the last two Gold Cup and Saucer races in P.E.I. is facing a 10-year suspension from harness racing. Jeffrey Gillis was part of an FBI investigation that revealed he was buying performance-enhancing drugs and giving them to horses. CBC's Wayne Thibodeau has more.
