Lakelsa.
If Lakelsa wants to become a Group 1 winner at Addington tonight she is going to have to keep improving.
The good news for trainer Regan Todd is he thinks she has.
The Canterbury pacing mare has been the huge mover in the national mares pacing ranks this summer, having won her last three races, including the Group 2 Mares Championship last start over many of her rivals in tonight’s Fahey Fence Hire Breeders Stakes.
Lakelsa is a rarity in being a high-class mare who didn’t race until she was four so it is hard to predict where her ceiling is.
“She has definitely got better with every run this time in,” says Todd, whose stable is going through a purple patch.
“That win last start over most of these mares was really good but she led that night and a few of them had harder runs and some were quite fresh so they might be fitter this week.
“We also have some gate speed inside us from Ruby Roe and Mr Kaplan so it won’t be as easy as strolling to the front and winning again.
“But she is a a good mare and she doesn’t have to lead to win so we have options.
“We know she will need to go to a new peak to win this week but there is no reason she can’t.”
Lakelsa has been aided by Group 1 winners All You Need Is Me (barrier 9) and Treacherous Baby (2 second line) drawing to settle behind her, although Treacherous Baby might be handy soon after the start.
Todd also has Treacherous Gall in tonight’s 2600m mobile and says punters should forget her last-start failure in the race Lakelsa won.
“She went too bad to be true and I can’t find a reason why so I am willing to forgive her but she has drawn wide in a tough race.”
Tonight’s meeting not only hosts the Group 1 but also brings the return of Muscle Mountain, who hasn’t raced since winning the National Trot at Alexandra Park on New Year’s Eve.
The giant trotter faces only five rivals and three of those are his stablemates, so if driver Ben Hope wants it, Muscle Mountain should be able to stroll to the lead.
If he does, the multi punters who took the $1.25 opening price should have a relaxing watch.
That race, the Summer Free-For-All, is Muscle Mountain’s first step towards the $600,000 TAB Trot slot race at Cambridge on April 4, a race that could crown his career as the open-class trotting ranks on both sides of the Tasman go through a post-Just Believe transition.
** If Todd does win tonight’s Group 1 with Lakelsa it may not be his only major victory for the weekend, as his star juvenile pacer of last season, Marketplace, looks certain to leave tomorrow’s Horse of the Year awards at Addington with a trophy or two.
Marketplace will have his first fast workout away from home next week as Todd counts down to bringing him to Alexandra Park next month.
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.