Grant Dixon has swung a surprise change of plans in his quest to win the Cox Plate of harness racing, the Group 1 Victoria Cup, for the first time with his champion pacer Leap To Fame.<\/p>\n
As sharp as Leap To Fame looked winning first-up at Albion Park last Saturday night, Dixon confirmed Australasia\u2019s all-time richest pacer would back-up in the 1720m Smoken Up Sprint at Melton.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s booked on a flight (from Brisbane) to Melbourne in the middle of the night Thursday (night), so will be there early Friday morning,\u201d Dixon said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as he handles the trip well, and he\u2019s had plenty of experience at it, we\u2019ll run again this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe won well and did it easily last Saturday, but another run will just sharpen-up that it more again.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s as much about how well he thrives on racing. Going into the biggest races, he seems to love racing each week, so we\u2019ll do that again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps Dixon is also mindful Leap To Fame\u2019s only defeat in a Victoria Cup came back in 2023 when he had raced just once in the seven weeks leading into it.<\/p>\n
Racing again this week means Saturday week\u2019s $250,000 Victoria Cup will be Leap To Fame\u2019s third start in as many weeks.<\/p>\n
Having won the Inter Dominion (twice), Hunter Cup, Miracle Mile and Blacks A Fake, the Victoria Cup is the lone \u201cmega\u201d eastern states feature race Leap To Fame is yet to win,<\/p>\n
Along with his close third placing in 2023, he was a dominant favourite last year, but scratched just days before the race with a throat infection.<\/p>\n
Leap To Fame\u2019s surprise appearance this week means he will clash for the first time with last-start TAB Eureka winner Bay Of Biscay, who is also bound for the Victoria Cup.<\/p>\n
In more exciting news for Victorians, Dixon said Leap To Fame would have three starts at Melton this trip.<\/p>\n
\u201cRather than take him all the way home, we\u2019re going to keep him in Victoria and fly him into NZ six days before the NZ Cup (November 11),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes sense to take a flight and extra flight back home and then a road trip to Brisbane out of his schedule.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead, he can stay in Victoria after the Cup and fly direct from Melbourne to Auckland (and then get a connecting flight to Christchurch.<\/p>\n
\u201cGiven it\u2019s more than three weeks between the Victoria Cup and NZ (Cup), I\u2019ll look to give him another race at Melton to keep him up to the mark, especially with NZ being over two miles (3200m).\u201d<\/p>\n
The options are a 2240m free-for-all at Melton on October 25 or a 1720m free-for-all on November 1.<\/p>\n
The timing of the 1720m race would seem\u00a0better given racing again on October 25 would mean four runs in as many weeks for Leap To Fame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grant Dixon has swung a surprise change of plans in his quest to win the Cox Plate of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181230,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-181229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181229\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}