Victory for veteran

Take After Me (Holmes Hanover) reigned supreme in a field full of veteran trotters with the tightest of finishes at the Banks Peninsula harness meeting at Motukarara today.

After a great beginning, driver John Morrison slotted Take After Me on the inside behind the leader Cosmic Angel. There was a bit of shuffling prior to the home straight and Take After Me looked in trouble with plenty of horses in front of him. Morrison managed to weave a path through though and got a run up the inside and put in the deciding stride.

Owned by Fred and Jan Scott and trained at Kaiapoi by Fred, the thirteen year old won by a nose from eight year old Ruthless Lizzie with another nose back to ten year old Ali Lindenny.

“I lost track of him when he was coming up the straight. It wasn’t till they were right on the line that we realised he was in the finish,” Jan said.

It was the gelding’s nineteenth win from three hundred and forty eight starts.

“Fred trains at Neil’s (cousin Neil Radford) and we keep the horses there. He mostly does paddock work and he takes him down to the beach once a week. His legs have stood up well by not being on hard tracks all the time.”

Take After Me qualified as a pacer at Rangiora in 2013 and as a trotter on the same course in 2018.

“He always liked trotting in the paddock. When we thought he was at his limit pacing, Glenn (son) said to his Dad why don’t we try him trotting.”

He’s now won four pacing and fifteen trotting, with John Morrison driving him in eight of those wins.

“The horse doesn’t like to be held onto at the start and John’s got the start down to a tee. He knows the old horse pretty well.”

Take After Me is out of the Live Or Die mare Give Or Take which the Scott’s raced. She won four races – three for Radford and one for Brent Lilley and was good enough to finished second to One Dream in the Sires Stakes Fillies Championship.

Fred has been training for four seasons and got his licence when Glenn sadly passed away with cancer nearly three years ago.

Besides Take After Me, Give Or Take has left Takemybreathaway (Bettor’s Delight) which has won nine races.

“We just sold her to Australia in December because we’re breeding from a full sister (Take A Break). They plan to race her over the summer and breed from her next year.”

Take After Me is the most successful converted pacer since the 1940s. Others to covert successfully to the trotting gait have been Unique Star (1 pacing win and 14 trotting), Live The Dream (3/11), Aron Del (1/10), Darky Forbes (1/10) and The Fat Controller (1/10).

Take After Me is the last horse racing by Holmes Hanover. The Albatross stallion left the winners of 3,019 pacing races and sixty four trotting races.

by Bruce Stewart, for Harnesslink