Trainer-reinsman Robbie Williams was concerned when his inexperienced four-year-old Franco Sheriff was in a capricious mood during the on-track preliminary before the $27,000 Taste Of WA Next Friday Pace over 2536m at Gloucester Park on Friday night.<\/p>\n
Despite going into the race with only eleven starts under his belt — against eight rivals who had between them a total of 831 starts — Franco Sheriff was a warm $2.30 favourite from the No. 1 barrier.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was throwing his head around in the preliminary which seemed to be bothering him,\u201d said Williams. \u201cSo, I removed the nearside pole pricker, and thankfully he didn\u2019t hang down during the race.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franco Sheriff was beaten for early speed by Louie Lebeau ($23) and Cams Boulder ($12) but he was able to hold up and lead. He then set a solid pace and went on to win comfortably by three lengths from Louie Lebeau and Infinite Sign ($5.50), rating 1.57.5 after final quarters of 28.6sec. and 28.8sec.<\/p>\n
This took Franco Sheriff\u2019s record to twelve starts for five wins, two placings and $46,770. He won once from six starts in New Zealand and his six WA starts have produced four wins and one third placing.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe early speed revved him up a bit, and with the horses out wide firing up out of the gate helped him, and he had never travelled like that before,\u201d said Williams. \u201cUsually, he is too lackadaisical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Williams was impressed with the way Franco Sheriff performed, and he is considering nominating him for the Golden Nugget preludes in the next couple of weeks.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is very lightly raced and is starting to get used to our style of racing,\u201d said Williams. \u201cAfter the way he went tonight we might have a look at running in the preludes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franco Sheriff is raced by a band of 18 enthusiastic stable clients. \u201cA friend of mine in New Zealand rang me and recommended that I should purchase him,\u201d said Williams. \u201cI had a look at him and quite liked him, and he wasn\u2019t an overly expensive horse. And it is great to have a big syndicate and have so many people involved in harness racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Franco Sheriff is by former star pacer Vincent and is the second foal out of Bettors Delight mare My Shieldmaiden, who raced 16 times for one win, six seconds and $13,117 in stakes.<\/p>\n
My Shieldmaiden\u2019s dam Alta Serena was an outstanding pacer who earned $593,618 from 21 wins and 21 placings from 62 starts. She won at 18 of her 51 New Zealand appearances and was successful at three of her eleven Australian starts.<\/p>\n
Alta Serena won several feature events, including a group 1 race for three-year-old fillies at Addington in May 2003 and the 3200m group 1 Easter Cup at Addington in April 2005. She also finished second to Mainland Banner in the group 1 New Zealand Cup in November 2005.<\/p>\n
By Ken Casellas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Trainer-reinsman Robbie Williams was concerned when his inexperienced four-year-old Franco Sheriff was in a capricious mood during the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":196204,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-196203","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\/196203","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=196203"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196203\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}