Grafton horse Kasharn has taken out this year’s Armidale Cup after beating favourite Loud Enough to the line by half a length on Sunday.
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The six-year-old gelding has only been part of Dwayne Schmidt’s stable for less than three weeks and hit the ground running with the $40,000 win over the 1900 metres.
Backhouse Billy finished third for Jenny Graham while last year’s Cup winner Carry On Jake snagged fourth.
Schmidt and jockey Matthew Paget had planned to run Kasharn in a race where he featured down in the weights to give him the best chance at winning.
And it payed off.
“I thought he was a very good chance because he had no weight on his back,” he said.
“I reckon he had been looking at that distance for a fair while.
“Down in the weights with the speed on, I thought he was going to be a genuine chance.”
Schmidt hasn’t put too many more plans in place for Kasharn but touted either a Grafton Cup or Brisbane-based race as being in line for the horse somewhere down the track.
“He is going to be very hard to place so he will probably end up in Brisbane somewhere in a race up there,” he said.
“He does love the track. We might have a crack at the Grafton Cup or even drop back to the South Grafton Cup.”
The win on Kasharn was Paget’s second for the day after guiding the Paul Grills-trained Image of Love home for a win in the Class 4 Handicap.
Grills was pleased with the four-year-old mare’s run and said it was a bit of patience by Paget which saw a gap open up for her to stride through for the win.
“There were a couple of pretty good horses against her,” he said.
“She was boxed in a bit, the blokes beside me said 'she's boxed in' and I said 'don't worry about Paget, he'll wait and he will make a gap if he has to' and he did make a gap.”