Bet N Win has the possible disadvantage of going into the race fresh and punters who saw his race-night workout at Addington last Friday might balk at the fact he galloped when getting up to full speed in the home straight.<\/p>\n
Co-trainer David White says that is his fault, as he tried to find Bet N Win a few more metres of speed by taking his shoes off for the workout.<\/p>\n
While not common here, trainers in Europe and Scandinavia quite often race their trotters barefoot in big races, the belief being that in their most natural state, they can trot faster.<\/p>\n
Sometimes trotters there race with no front shoes but shoes on their rear hooves, while in heats and final races like the famous Elitloppet in Sweden, horses will sometimes wear shoes in the heats but race barefoot in the final two hours later.<\/p>\n
With a couple of hundred years of breeding behind them, the European-bred trotters can get away with it because their gait is often so clean.<\/p>\n
As it turns out, Bet N Win can\u2019t \u2013 not just yet.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried something different last week but it didn\u2019t work,\u201d White admitted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it might work in the future so I haven\u2019t given up on the idea of racing him shoeless to get more speed out of him but not right now.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he will have the shoes back on for Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Footwear issues aside, White and his wife Stacey White couldn\u2019t be happier with Bet N Win for his comeback and they literally know he has the heart to get the job done.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis heart rate is amazing,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA normal horse might have a heart rate of 85 beats per minute after a workout but his is usually 75bpm [beats per minute] even after a good workout, and never gets above 80.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is around five beats per minute lower than it was this time last year so as he is getting stronger, the work is taxing him less.\u201d<\/p>\n
If Bet N Win\u2019s new shoes and big heart combine at the right time, he might just be the horse to beat in the Renwick Farms Dominion at Addington on November 11 \u2013 but White says tomorrow\u2019s night comeback dash could be more about manners.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually you wouldn\u2019t be confident with a horse off a 20m handicap over 2000m but Oscar Bonavena has been coming off back marks and beating up on most of these horses,\u201d he suggested.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think one of us back-markers should probably win and that might come down to who steps the fastest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat could be us because he is usually so quick away but even if that is right, we wouldn\u2019t want Oscar getting straight on to our back as I don\u2019t think there is a horse in Australasia who can beat him for speed under those circumstances.\u201d<\/p>\n
The TAB opened with Oscar Bonavena the $2.60 favourite for tomorrow night\u2019s race, with Bet N Win decent value at $4.60 and Muscle Mountain at $6.50.<\/p>\n
A trot of that quality would usually be the highlight of most harness racing meetings, but it is just one of a string of major races at tomorrow\u2019s New Zealand Bloodstock Standardbred Harness Million meeting.<\/p>\n
There are three of those sales series races, including Jumal trying to remain unbeaten in the $200,000 freshman boys pace, Akuta and Republican Party faces 25m back marks in the open pace and Marketplace heads a hot 3-year-old pacing field in the Dakins Flying Stakes.<\/p>\n
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 <\/b>Herald<\/b> as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the <\/b>Herald\u2019s<\/b> Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bet N Win has the possible disadvantage of going into the race fresh and punters who saw his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":483370,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[160192,14120,5176,13695,160191,160190,7009,72601,19772,21023,301,9348,25045,12153,21030,5772,1071,26335,160189,35253,79,5598,6093,44975,1067,61933,16,15,6495,9985],"class_list":{"0":"post-483369","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-addington","9":"tag-after","10":"tag-and","11":"tag-back","12":"tag-basics","13":"tag-cupwinning","14":"tag-experiment","15":"tag-failed","16":"tag-has","17":"tag-he","18":"tag-heart","19":"tag-horse","20":"tag-last","21":"tag-match","22":"tag-night","23":"tag-now","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-return","26":"tag-rowe","27":"tag-shoes","28":"tag-sports","29":"tag-the","30":"tag-to","31":"tag-tomorrow","32":"tag-top","33":"tag-trotter","34":"tag-uk","35":"tag-united-kingdom","36":"tag-week","37":"tag-will"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483369","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=483369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/483370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}