Major outranks the troops

Driver Gemma Thornley certainly earned her driving fee today. She reined Action Major (Art Major) to win at Addington, but she did have to constantly remind the four year old that he was in a race not a Sunday stroll.

Trainer Geoff Dunn commented after the race, “He’s quite aggressive round home, I couldn’t believe how lazy he was. He’s a stayer. His pet distance is the 2600 metres like today. He lacks a wee bit of high speed, but he stays like hell. He can get outsprinted over 1980 but over 2600 he can take the sting out of them.”

The gelding lead for the entire trip and at the end of the 2600 metres he had three quarters of a length margin over Auntie Deb who made up ground late.

“We don’t mind him in front, so he can dictate and get them a bit breathless.”

ACTION MAJOR REPLAY

The win was the gelding’s third in nineteen starts and well deserved. He’d run second behind some handy types in Christies Art, Celestial Sea, Kotare Kelso and Esmeralda.

“He started out great. His form was great but then he went off on us last year and we couldn’t find what it was. We checked everything. He lost weight and his coat wasn’t as good. We bit the bullet and turned him out. While he was out he blew out three foot abscesses. Since then he’s never looked back. His gate speed is getting better. We won’t be scared to use him out of the gate because we know he can stay.”

Dunn thinks there’s a nice race in the gelding somewhere down the track.

“The question mark is around standing starts and whether we can get him to go away. His manners are getting better all the time but with those stands you’ve got to get away pretty quick.”

Bob and Jen Sandford share in the ownership of Action Major with Dunn.

The partnership goes back a fair way with the Sandfords and Dunn racing good horses Venus Serena, Tiger Tara and The Falcon.

“It goes back at least thirty years. We’ve had some bloody nice horses. We just don’t have the same numbers with Bob anymore.”  

Dunn was recommended to Sandford as a trainer by a West Melton rugby mate Simon Buckingham.

“He was Bob’s Sales Manager at Placemakers. Bob had raced horses for about thirty years and never won a race at Addington. We won them straight away and got him hooked. He’s been a great owner to me. He’s great to deal with.”

Dunn says although he played some rep rugby for Ellesmere it was always difficult to fit in around horses.

“We had a really busy week with the horses and we played Banks Peninsula on Saturday. The next morning we had training for Ellesmere. I had a night out after rugby, had to go to work then to training. Laurie O’Reilly was around then and he took us for a two hour training session. I went up to them and said ‘sorry people this is not for me’ and I pulled the pin.”

Action Major was bought at the 2022 NZB Standardbred Sales in Christchurch for $42,500.

“We used to buy them in a certain price range. The most expensive one we bought was The Falcon at $95,000. $7,000 to $40,000 was our go but nowdays at the sales those horses are around $100,000 so they’re hard to get into.”

For complete race results, click here.

by Bruce Stewart, for Harnesslink