Victa Damian Ready To Face His Biggest Test Yet
The annual running of the Leigh Rogers Grade 6 series will take centre stage this Thursday night at Angle Park, with the $10,000 to the winner feature bringing together some quality young dogs. It is a race which generally throws up a good dog, last year’s winner was Don’t Tell Lies who has gone on to show how good she is. Six heats were run for this year’s series last week, with some impressive performances dished up. Spring High Low used box one in her heat to get a clear run and win in 30.69, whilst Shan’s Jinx was brilliant in second up effort after six months, winning powerfully in 30.64. Clearly the best performance came from rising star Victa Damian, who was easily the quickest heat winner, jumping on the arm and running 30.36, with some flying first splits. His trainer, Lisa Rasmussen was happy with the run, considering he had a couple of issues after his last run.
“I was very pleased. He had a few issues that we worked on and we knew he would be slightly underdone coming into the race, as he hadn’t had too much work.” said Rasmussen
Whilst Victa Damian will go into the race as a hot favourite, it won’t be an easy task for him as he will have to navigate a notoriously tricky box eight, which is simply not easy to win from at Angle Park. Lisa however, isn’t overly concerned with the draw.
“Because of all the pace in the race I don’t actually mind him out there. It's his first time in a full field of eight so it will be a test to get around them. In saying that, I would rather him try to get around them than be stuck in the middle of all of the speedy beginners.”
Lisa rates the improving Basil Brush Rose as the hardest to beat away from Victa Damian, with the improving type putting in some impressive efforts recently.
“Basil Brush Rose performed really well against seasoned dogs in the Gawler Cup series.”
Before Victa Damian started his career, had been showing plenty, which led to a big betting move for him on debut. He showed his potential and more in that debut run on Adelaide Cup night, where he dealt with box eight and showed smarts and strength. He has always looked like he could be good, with his last set of trials before he started, showing Lisa and the team that he might be something special
“He broke in quite well, he was the fastest in the litter. Shadow’s reared him and Ron has always been fond of him.”
“He’s a bit different to the others, he just has a different attitude compared to the other boys in the litter. He’s still a bit of a bugger to handle but he’s quiet in the kennels, doesn’t chew anything, doesn’t mess in the kennel, he’s just really good.”
“He travels really well, you can put him in the van and he lays down before you shut the door basically. He loves travelling.”
“The first time we trialled him it was as if he had been around half a dozen times already and we were quite astounded. We worked them up and he was always trialling really well. He was meant to start racing at the same time as (Victa) Alby, but we trialled them together and Alby gave him a good bump on the corner and Damian hurt his shoulder. He got put back 4 or 5 weeks with that injury. We took him back again and he took another full step.”
If all goes well after the final on Thursday, then Victa Damian will push on to some much bigger targets, which potentially will include the biggest target of them all…
“After this race, all depending on how he runs, we are going to the Melbourne Cup prelude with Mallee Magic, if he (Victa Damian) goes really really well Thursday night, then we will take him too because if he’s running the splits in front then he’s half a chance. Ultimately the next big goal for him is the Silver Chief.”
“Obviously he’s got to improve his run home slightly more, but he’s probably the fastest dog we’ve had in our kennel at this stage of his career, he’s faster than Mallee Magic was at this stage.”
Hopefully Victa Damian continues to improve and he can show his best Thursday night.
The field is as follows
- Spring Honour
- Emerley Spicy
- Shan’s Jinx
- Yarramundi Turbo
- Zipping Daria
- Basil Brush Rose
- Spring High Low
- Victa Damian
- Finniss Surprise (Res)
- Barefoot Rebel (Res)
The race is set to run at 8:19 pm local time.