Rawlings with a big hand in SA St Leger Heats
Rawlings with a big hand in SA St Leger Heats
An excellent night of racing awaits punters this Thursday night at Angle Park, with four heats of the South Australian St Leger to be run for the 2024 series.
It is an age restricted event for younger chasers and last year it was taken out in emphatic style by Queen Of Scotch, who won dominantly in 30.33.
This year's series has some high quality chasers and the Ben Rawlings kennel will play an imposing hand across the heats.
With six chasers engaged over the heats for the Rawlings team, their is in one particular that will bring an intimidating presence, that being the recent acquisition to the kennels in the form of Peaky Boo.
Having done some previous racing in Western Australian and Victoria, he made his way to the Rawlings kennel with Ben's Dad (Neil) looking for a dog to race with a group of friends.
“Dad had a couple of his mates that wanted to get a dog and something that would be decent, so he reached out to Steve Withers and asked if he had anything for sale. They went back and forth with a couple dogs and they settled on this bloke.” Said Rawlings
“His form wasn’t anything great to look at but obviously I have a good relationship with Steve who is pretty honest on a dog's ability, so we took him at his word and went from there.”
Being first up for a shade over 6 weeks, Peaky Boo produced an excellent victory last Thursday to win his first South Australian start. It was a flying performance from the black dog, as he worked hard early to find the front, before running away from the field and winning by a massive 9 lengths in a fast 30.53, with that run coming as no surprise to Rawlings.
“Leading into last week he trialled hot, he handslipped 14.70 and then he had two box to boxes, he went 5.24-17.61 and 5.21-17.55, so he went in trialling hot. He hadn’t been over 500m for a while, so I thought he would get a little bit tired.” said Rawlings
“While he didn’t put it to bed completely, he did a really good job to push over from box six, he definitely wants to get down. He just showed his pace and took off, he cramped a little bit so I would expect a fair bit of improvement given it was his first 500 in quite some time.”
Peaky Boo has come up with the converted red box in the second heat of the series and has found a race where he should be leading and getting his chance to win, with Rawlings confident he will be hard to beat.
“He’s probably got the hardest field depth wise, the red is obviously a massive plus as he wants to get to the fence. He’s a bit full on at the track, so another early race is good. He does need to sort that out and mature, he’s a bit similar to Riot Rooster. The red suits, if he can begin his best, around that 5.20 mark then that will see him leading, he should take off down the back. I would think he would be capable of getting down around the 30.20s.” said Rawlings
With what is quite an impressive team of dogs entered into the series, Rawlings believes that Peaky Boo is his best chance, but also gives another one of his emerging chasers a good hope.
“I think he’s (Peaky Boo) probably the best chance because I see him being in the final, but we’ve got a pretty good hand, Riot Rooster is obviously going great, third in the John Gray and the first time against tougher opposition. I thought he dealt with it okay, he wanted to get off a bit early out wide where he likes it, so that was a lesson for him. The full field field will suit him, he’s just got to deal Gav’s (Harris) good bitch (Springvale Rita).” said Rawlings
Away from the St Leger, the night will also see an Open class event over both the 530m and 730m distances, along with a mixed 5/6 final over the 595m journey.
Racing starts at 6:34pm local time.
Best Bets:
Spontaneous (Race 2, Number 5)
Victa Marli (Race 7, Number 2)