MELTED Moments is by Any Given Saturday and it might just be this Saturday the Armidale gelding strikes.
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The Paul Grills-trained six-year-old lines up in the $10,000 Royal Hotel Iris Rennie Memorial Manilla Cup (1600m) and his trainer believes he will be a good chance when Jodi Worley jumps him from barrier three in the feature race at Gunnedah’s Riverside Racecourse.
“He should go alright.
“He had that race won at Grafton the other day but the other one (With Every Bound) fought back and beat him. He hit the front at the 200m and we thought he had it but the other one must have been a tough horse because he fought back and just beat us. It was like old Dusty’s Felt,” Grills said.
It will be the former Armidale Cup winner’s first run at Gunnedah. He has won four of his 25 starts and been placed another seven times for almost $66,000 in prizemoney.
“He doesn’t like the heat though,” Grills commented.
“Ran him at Bingara last year in the heat, ran a massive fourth but he over did it and he’s taken a long while to come back.”
His run at Grafton showed he might be back to near his best although his other problem is “he doesn’t steer too well”.
“He’s not the best horse to ride. Put it this way, I wouldn’t like to be playing polocrosse on him,” he said.
Melted Moments drops two kilograms from the 56kg he carried at Grafton.
Worley also rides Grills’ other runner, The Skrill.
A four-year-old bay gelding by Skilled, The Skrill contests the 2700m Oaktree Retirement Villages North West Stayers Challenge Benchmark 46 Handicap.
He and Worley go from barrier six in a seven-horse staying test.
“He’s just a big dopey fellow,” Grills said.
One of his riders suggested to Grills he should send the gelding “around twice” after a recent effort. So he did.
“He ran a real good race at Grafton over 2370m,” he said.
Manilla residents will bus it to Gunnedah again for another massive race day, the feature of which is named in honour of Iris Rennie, one of the truly devoted racing owners and racing fans to have graced this earth.
She raced numerous horses during her life time and celebrated many wins and plenty of losses with equal fun and good spirit, advised good friends Vicki and Thomas Cocking.
They own the Royal Hotel, Manilla and are major sponsors of the Iris Rennie Memorial Manilla Cup.
The Cockings also organise a busload of racing fans to go to Gunnedah every year, something Iris also enjoyed greatly.
“I’ve still got to organise people for the bus,” Vicki said on Thursday.
“Some say they don’t have anything to wear. If Iris was here she’d just say what’s your problem, get on the bus and come and have a great day out. Or if they didn’t have anything to wear she’d tell them to come down to her house and she’d find a hat for them.
“She just loved it all.”
The Iris Rennie Memorial Manilla Cup jumps at 4.18pm and is the fifth of six $10,000 Sky 2 races.