By Jordyn Bublitz<\/p>\n
It might not have looked likely on paper, but Caviar Noire turned the tables in style on Thursday night, delivering a gutsy upset in the Charlie Hunter Our Patron Handicap Trot at Cambridge Raceway.<\/p>\n
Trained and driven by Owen Gillies, the six-year-old mare went into the 2200m assignment with modest expectations, having failed to feature in her previous starts. But Gillies was quietly confident she wasn\u2019t far away from turning things around.<\/p>\n
\u201cComing into it, I wasn\u2019t too worried about her form,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can\u2019t really count a couple of those runs where she\u2019s stood on the mark, and I thought her Ruakaka run was actually really good. She got back on a hard track to make ground on but kept whacking away.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the stand, Caviar Noire did everything right early, stepping cleanly and settling on the fence behind tearaway leader Yurok.<\/p>\n
The decisive moment came approaching the final 400 metres, with the leader starting to tire, Gillies eased the mare off the pegs and into the clear, setting up a home-straight showdown with race favourite Luca.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought she was beat at the top of the straight,\u201d he admitted. \u201cShe got a good trip and got off the fence at the right time, but I didn\u2019t think we had the speed to beat Luca.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the pair locked together in the run home, the favourite began to lose composure under pressure, and Gillies was quick to capitalise.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a smart trotter, but when he started hopping and skipping I knew that was our chance. We probably didn\u2019t have the speed to go past him otherwise, so we just had to apply the pressure.\u201d<\/p>\n
What followed was a determined finish, with Caviar Noire refusing to yield as she edged ahead in the shadows of the post to score by a nose. It was her third win in 20 starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The performance marked a turnaround for the mare, who Gillies admits has taken time to furnish.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s taken her a long time to get her head in the game, but she\u2019s starting to work it all out now.\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
As for what\u2019s next, the stable is happy to let her enjoy the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll probably just give her a month off now,\u201d Gillies said. \u201cShe can have a little freshen up, she\u2019s done a good job.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jordyn Bublitz It might not have looked likely on paper, but Caviar Noire turned the tables in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-383291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-new-zealand","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=383291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/383291\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=383291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=383291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=383291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}