Racing: Smoken Up burns in 1:48.5 mile

Interdominion winner Smoken Up (No 10) made no buts about his latest win at Menangle on Saturday night. Photo / Natalie Slade

Lance Justice has won a historic battle but still faces a far more important war this week.

The Victorian trainer-driver partnered beleaguered Interdominion champion Smoken Up to an Australasian mile record 1:48.5 in the Len Smith Mile at Menangle, outside Sydney, on Saturday night.

Harness racing time records come and go and usually don't mean a hell of a lot but Saturday's performance was something else all together.

Smoken Up clipped a mind-boggling 1.8 seconds off his own Australasian record, set winning the Miracle Mile in November.

And he did it the way he always does, with no help from his rivals as he simply exploded off the gate from barrier eight to rush to the lead and just kept on running.

Even allowing for the super fast Menangle track and recent improvements in sulky technology, a 1:48.5 time in this part of the world is scarcely believable and Smoken Up's performance goes down as one of the great solo efforts in Australasian racing history.

"What a time," said Justice.

"And imagine how much faster he could go in the US.

"We have to look at taking him there now because I think he could break the world record."

That stands at 1:46.4 jointly held by Somebeachsomewhere and Holborn Hanover.

Justice had predicted the former Kiwi pacer would break the magical 1:50 mark and punched the air with an extravagant whip flourish but that might have been part joy and part self-justification.

He and Smoken Up have been under attack for the past 10 days since the pacer returned a positive swab to DMSO after winning the $800,000 Interdominion Pacing Final at Alexandra Park on April 8.

Justice vehemently denies ever having used the substance on Smoken Up and his efforts to keep that Interdominion title will continue today. That is when testing of the B-sample of the swab starts in Australia.

If, like most B samples in these circumstances, it is also positive, Justice and his lawyers will have to prove Smoken Up was contaminated with DMSO to keep their Interdom title.

That is a far more daunting task than even pacing a 1:48.5 mile.

But Saturday night's historic performance will at least provide Justice and Smoken Up's connections with some solace.

After the positive swab, Justice would have known that Smoken Up would be watched more closely and tested more thoroughly, than ever before.

So you can be rest assured he was powered by nothing more than oxygen and feed on Saturday night.

That suggests Smoken Up isn't a horse who needed drugs in his system to win the Interdominion Final.

That may not keep him the race, but it will at least help save face and partially silence any over zealous critics who want to label the horse a drug cheat.

So what does a 1:48.5 mile time actually mean for the Australasian industry?

For the breeding industry, it means little, with Smoken Up a gelding and breeders hardly likely to go crazy for his sire, Tinted Cloud, after he has had moderate success over the past decade.

He was himself a speed freak miler and has passed it on to the best of his sons, but has left plenty of duds along the way.

What the record time does suggest is that our best standardbreds may be capable of copping harder runs more regularly than some of our horsemen think and that trainer-drivers like Justice, who never look for a place to hide, are the way of the future.

Of course those tactics won't work for all horses.

But the Smoken Ups of this world are exposing the weakness in some of our breed, which is often based around yearling sales looks and age group racing, rather than breeding a horse for the ages.

Which is what Smoken Up became on Saturday night.

MAGIC MILES

The Australasian Mile record over the years:

1980, 1:56.2: Lord Module (Christchurch).
1981, 1:55.9: Popular Alm (Sydney).
1982, 1:55.8: Gammalite (Perth).
1984, 1:54.5: Popular Alm (Brisbane).
1986, 1:54.3: Preux Chevalier (Brisbane).
1991, 1:53.9: Thorate (Brisbane).
1998, 1:53.1: Quantum Lobell (Newcastle).
2006, 1:52.8: Pay Me Christian (Newcastle).
2008, 1:51.9: Smoken Up (Menangle).
2009, 1:50.8: Monkey King (Menangle).
2010, 1:50.3: Smoken Up (Menangle).
2011, 1:48.5: Smoken Up (Menangle).