“He will lead for sure and we won’t be handing up,” says Hope.
“He has the gate speed to get across them and Ben will let him roll.
“I think he can roll strong, even sectionals and make them really chase.”
So will that, in Hope’s opinion, be enough to beat Just Believe?
“I am not saying we will beat him because he is a champion and he was very good at Cambridge.
“But our best chance of beating him is getting ahead of him and rolling.
“After all, our horse has trotted 3.56 for 3200 metres and while this isn’t 3200, the 2700 with the mobile star score up makes for a really good staying test and we will turn it into that.”
While Just Believe’s star has been on an endless rise since joining the Jess Tubbs/Greg Sugars team two years ago, Muscle Mountain has had a rollercoaster last year.
When at his peak and healthy and happy, he looks every bit as talented as Just Believe and maybe flat out faster but he has missed the bullseye in the races that matter most.
He galloped away before being enormous in defeat in the Rowe Cup last May, then suffered atrial fibrillation and was pulled up in the Dominion at Addington in November.
In between, he often wins and wins big so he has earned the right to go to war with Just Believe tactically on Friday night and Hope’s aggressiveness could at least make for a great race, rather than the parade that was last Friday’s Lyell Creek.
Just Believe seems to thrive on long distance racing though and has still opened as the TAB’s $1.30 favourite ahead of Muscle Mountain at $4.50.
New Zealand Trotter of the Year Oscar Bonavena is the $6 third-favourite and while he trailed Just Believe and couldn’t make any ground on him last Friday, he went into that race having missed some work - so should improve this week.
The National Trot could even rival the $110,000 Messenger for race of the night honours on one of Alexandra Park’s biggest nights of the year.
With Queensland pacer Speak The Truth drawn the ace in the Messenger, he too could try for an all-the-way win and that could make for an interesting tactical challenge for Merlin (barrier three), Don’t Stop Dreaming (two on the second line) and last Friday’s shock Taylor Mile winner, Mach Shard.
Don’t Stop Dreaming opened as the $2.60 TAB favourite ahead of Merlin at $3.50, with Mach Shard’s $11 opening odds a tiny fraction of the mammoth $155 he paid on the win tote last Friday.
The night also hosts the Young Guns Pacing Final in which a rare filly, Youretheonethatiwant, will take on the juvenile boys, as well as the Northern Trotting Oaks and the return of Northern Pacing Oaks winner All You Need Is Me as she takes on Duchess Megxit again.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
