Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX<\/p>\n
Our Thunder, a former New South Wales pacer who has a losing sequence of 63 and has managed just two wins from 79 starts, will make his West Australian debut and his first appearance at a metropolitan track when he lines up in the $21,000 BOTRA Thanks Lovick Fabrication Pace over 2130m at Gloucester Park on Friday night.<\/p>\n
The six-year-old whose racing has been confined to minor events on New South Wales country tracks and at Canberra, has the lowest possible national rating of 30.<\/p>\n
Our Thunder\u2019s latest success was 26 months ago when he sat behind the pacemaker Taste Up before getting up to beat that pacer by a half-head, rating 1.583 over 1770m at Canberra. His previous win was 11 months earlier when he led and won at a 2.2.4 rate over 1770m at Albury.<\/p>\n
Those are hardly the credentials for a possible city winner at Gloucester Park. But he is expected to be a hot favourite and has three excellent reasons to be touted as a winner: He is prepared by the astute Michael Young, who heads the WA trainers\u2019 premiership table with 75 winners (25 ahead of his nearest rival, Aiden De Campo), will be driven by Gary Hall Jnr, who is the State\u2019s leading driver this year with 115 winners (35 ahead of his nearest rival, Emily Suvaljko), and will start from the coveted No. 1 barrier.<\/p>\n
It is also in Our Thunder\u2019s favour that he will be meeting extremely modest opposition.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never seen the horse, but Youngy thinks he is going okay,\u201d said Hall. The general consensus is that Our Thunder will win the start and set the pace before going on to record a comfortable victory.<\/p>\n
Two of his rivals were winners at Gloucester Park on Tuesday night, with Luke Attack finishing strongly from the rear to win at a 1.59 rate over 2130m, and Mega Mach, who rated 1.58.5 over 2130m when he set the pace and won by two lengths after a final 400m of 28.8sec.<\/p>\n
Baskerville trainer Ryan Bell faces a busy evening on Friday with Atlantic gem (race one), Mr Fantastic (race four) and Machs Bettor (race seven) in action.<\/p>\n
He will handle Mr Fantastic, while Liam Elliott will drive Atlantic Gem and Machs Bettor. He will also drive Alcopony for trainer Kevin Keys in race five, and he has sound each-way prospects in the final three events in which will drive Sheza Sassy Lassy (race eight), Alta Allure (race nine) and Lady Dela Hoya (race ten).<\/p>\n
\u201cAtlantic Gem\u2019s second last week was a massive improvement on her previous start (second at Narrogin), but I still feel she didn\u2019t find the line as good as she could last week,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr Fantastic has a good draw at No. 2 on the back line, but with Chase Me expected to race to the front from barrier three, it makes it hard. But in saying that, Mr Fantastic is dropping back in grade after leading and winning last week. He is meeting a three-year-old (Chase Me) who is stepping up in grade.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alta Allure (barrier four) and Lady Dela Hoya (barrier four) are trained by Annie Belton and have each-way prospects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX Our Thunder, a former New South Wales pacer who has a losing sequence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268188,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-268187","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114866262276383152","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=268187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268187\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}