The first juvenile race of the season brings many things.
But the underlying current of a new potential champion draws most to the two-year-old season, owners and trainers starting with a blank canvas and hopefully creating the next star of the sport.
Each and every season, the rookie’s bring hope.
And the first two-year-old event of the Queensland season took place yesterday (Tuesday) at Albion Park with the running of the Noel & Christine Denning Burwood Stud Pace over the 1660m distance.
A field of five was drawn but only four started with an early scratching of Candyfloss, trainer Graham Dwyer was left with half of the field and ended up with a perfect one/two finish with Springfield Desire running down stablemate Maywyn Tough in a time of 1:59.4.
Sectionals of 29.1, 31.2, 29.8 and 29.4 seconds.
Both Springfield Desire and Maywyn Tough are raced by Rob and Pam Essex.
And both are graduates of the 2017 Australian Pacing Gold Yearling Sale, from the Melbourne division.
Springfield Desire was purchased for $7500 while Maywyn Tough cost $30,000.
Based at Greenbank, Dwyer prepares a team of 20 horses with the bulk of his stock of the younger variety with the Essex couple investing heavily at the annual yearling sales staged throughout Australia.
“Most of the team is younger horses, Rob enjoys attending the sales each year and he’s got his own theories on pedigrees while I enjoy working with the youngsters. The obvious aim is to develop our own champion of the future.” Dwyer said.
The majority of the Essex owned horses carry the moniker of ‘Maywyn’ although some may slip through the net while others have being bought as tried racehorses; Springfield Desire was already named before his purchase last year.
Some of the better performed ‘Maywyn/s’ pacers over the years include Jasper, Tonz, Best, Courage, Storm, Zephyr, Gold and Zac among many others.
In 2010, Maywyn Jasper won the Gr.1 $100,000 Australian Pacing Gold 3yo Final at TABCORP Park, Menangle defeating For A Reason in a time of 1:52.7.
And the Essex/Dwyer combination is hoping to reach those dizzy heights again this season.
“We’ve got some really nice stock in the team although some have just been turned out for a break while these two guys will obviously keep racing; they’re both handling it really well and seem quite natural.
“All of their education and trials have been really pleasing and it was great to start off in a positive manner, hopefully there is still more improvement to come.
“I like both of them although Tough will end up being the stronger of the two. Both are staked for most things and we’ll keep working towards the Australian Pacing Gold series as the main target.”
Both pacers are likely to back-up in the next two-year-old race when scheduled.
Chris Barsby | RQ Web News | February 15 | Photo by Dan Costello