Surprise quinella has Sergio all smiles

Victorian trainer driver Sergio Lenardi freely admits he’s been around harness racing “longer than you think” but he’s still over the moon when he registers a career milestone.

At last week’s midweek Melton meeting Lenardi not only clocked up his 50^th winner as a trainer – but he also registered the first quinella in his career, with Trembita (Major Bronski – Twinkletoes (Tip Top Prince) and Bronski Royal in the Nevele R Stud Pace.

“To be honest, it was a little bit of a surprise because they got colds and I had to give them time off, so they were both first up for about seven weeks.  I thought they’d need the run,” Lenardi said.

“When they went across the line together, I really thought I had just hung on (with Bronski Royal) and I asked Greg Sugars (driver of Trembita) as we were pulling up if he reckoned he’d got me and he replied ‘Yep, I got you!’,” he said.

“Greg was right.  He’s a genius – at getting a winner and picking the result!”

The win was one of three for the day for Sugars.

Lenardi, a retired Victorian Railways worker, prepares a small team at his 15-acre property at Wildwood, near Sunbury and for the past 46 years has rarely been without a horse or two in work.

“Ivan and I are a bit of a team.  He’s out here some mornings before I’m even out of bed!  He loves them as much as I do,” Lenardi said.

“Trembita (36 starts 3 wins 10 places) is turning out to be one of his best horses I think.  We’re both really enjoying it at the moment,” he said.

“We’ve got three in work – these two and a two-year-old.  I do the shoeing and the breaking in myself and Ivan breeds his own, and helps me with the training, so it works well. I just like mucking around with them, we both do.”

Lenardi said he had been first introduced to harness racing in his youth.

“I lived at Craigieburn and I was only about 12 when I got interested in the late 1960s. I had a mate who was an electrician who used to train a few.  We only had gravel roads around there then – it’s a long time ago! – and he used to work them around the tracks, and I used to give him a hand,” he said.

“That got me interested, then an uncle of mine who trained a horse had to have knee surgery so he asked me to work the horse for him, which I did.  He actually sold me a trotter for 20 cents, which was one of the first horses I owned.

“I got my trainer’s licence and in 1975 I got my first winner with a horse called Fourth Request, who won four races for me.”

Lenardi said his best horse was one he raced in the 1990s, named Warwick Lad.

“He was my best horse by a very long way – he won some nice races including the VHRC Cup and the Carousel in New South Wales,” he said.

“But I also had another couple of handy ones called Drive Bye (nine wins) and Good Bye (13 wins), which I raced on lease.

“I’ve been in the sport for a long time, and you can get a bit lazy, but when you get a winner – or a quinella – that gees you up and gets you going again,” he laughed.

By Terry Gange for NewsAlert PR Mildura