Harness racing: Alexandra Park trotting tip hidden away in TAB markets

Belle Neige and Crystal Hackett won a $100,000 sprint race at Alexandra Park last December. Photo / Harness Racing New Zealand

The best tip in the main trot at Alexandra Park tonight is actually hidden away in the market for another race.

That race is the $400,000 Renwick Farms Dominion at Addington on New Zealand Cup day – and if you scroll far enough down the market, you will find Belle Neige paying $151.

Which is fair, because she almost certainly won’t win the Dominion. But the fact she is even entered for the great race means she is the one to beat in the 1700m mobile trot at The Park tonight.

Trainers Michelle Wallis and Bernie Hackett have three reps in tonight’s race and while Wallis can make a case for all three, she saved her highest praise for Belle Neige, winner of her last two.

“We think she won’t be out of place in the major trots, we are not saying she will win them, but she might be good enough to contest them,” Wallis said.

“That is why we nominated her for the Dominion and that is why she is, even from her wide draw, our best chance in that race on Friday.”

While Belle Neige has won her last two starts, they have been in standing starts over 2700m and 2200m and 1700m mobile sprint racing can be a mental test for some New Zealand trotters, as their brain struggles to keep up with their legs.

But as a former Aussie, Belle Neige not only has great mobile form but is a previous sprint winner in a 1m 56.6s mile in one of the $100,000 Golden Gait races at Alexandra Park last December.

“She is a mare in form and will be fitter than our other two, so she has to be our best chance,” Wallis said.

“Faith In Manchester is probably the toughest of the three and American Muscle is the one who might have improved the most this time in.

“You would say they are three of the best trotting mares in the North Island.”

The Wallis/Hackett barn is also one of the best in the North Island with their 40 wins so far this season, 38 of them with trotters, meaning they are the highest-placed stable on the national premiership of those who only train the north.

Team Telfer and Team Dunn are a long way ahead of them but both have stables in the North Island and the South Island.

“We are having a good year, [we] have some great owners and excellent staff and everybody works in well together,” Wallis, who is the mother of Belle Neige’s driver Crystal Hackett, said.

The stable have a promising young filly in Mad Mary in Race 1 tonight, where she meets one of similar ability in Pretty In Pink, and one of the pair should win.

Later in the night, Shegold gets her chance for the stable in Race 7, the second heat of the latest Metro Series.

“She can be hard to follow but sitting close to the speed and not working from two on the second line is her go.”

The stable have a rare pacer in Tuareg (R8, No 5) racing tonight and he will win a race somewhere, probably Cambridge, soon enough, while they have two maidens in the last trot with not much between them.

Harness weekend

Friday

** Addington, first race 5.31pm, Alexandra Park, first race 5.49pm.

Sunday

** Ōamaru, featuring Hannon Memorial, first race 12.05pm

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.