By Michael Guerin
The best tip in the main trot at Alexandra Park is actually hidden away in the market for another race.
That race is the $400,000 Renwick Farms Dominion Trot 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 saves 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,” says Wallis.
“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 to their legs.
But as a former Aussie, Belle Neige not only has great mobile form but is a previous sprint winner in a 1:56.6 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 out other two so she has to be our best chance,” said Wallis.
“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 and South Islands.
“We are having a good year, have some great owners and excellent staff and everybody works in well together,” says Wallis, who is the mother of Belle Neige’s driver Crystal Hackett.
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 three maidens in the last trot. There is not much between them but Royal Petite may be an improver on a disappointing last start.
