Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX<\/p>\n
Talented New Zealand-bred five-year-old Lusaka relished a rare opportunity to set the pace when he powered to the front from the No. 6 barrier and gave a bold frontrunning display to outclass his eleven rivals in the $31,000 Cash Converters Rotary Club of Fremantle Pace over 2130m at Gloucester Park on Friday night.<\/p>\n
This was the first time that Lusaka had led in a race since he was successful over 1730m at Gloucester Park on September 15, 2023. \u00a0He had won seven times when leading as a two and three-year-old, and then he raced 34 times without leading until Friday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cFinally, he was able to get a good pozzie (leading),\u201d said his driver Deni Roberts. \u201cHe is a really good frontrunner but he hasn\u2019t been able to show that, mainly due to bad barriers. He has won with the plugs in tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lusaka, a $7.20 chance mustered excellent early pace to surge past his stablemate Vegas Strip ($41) and dash to the front 400m after the start, with the lead time a smart 36.5sec.<\/p>\n
Lusaka then was able to amble through the opening quarters in 31sec. and 29sec. before sprinting over the final 400m sections in 28.3sec. and 27.4sec. He recorded a mile rate of 1.55 in beating $7 chance Talks Up A Storm, who raced three back on the pegs before finishing solidly. The winning margin was two and a half lengths.<\/p>\n
Lusaka, a Sweet Lou stallion who is prepared by leading trainers Greg and Skye Bond, is sure to develop into a strong candidate for the $450,000 WA Pacing Cup on December 12. He now has raced 47 times for 16 wins, 19 placings and $288,919 in prizemoney.<\/p>\n
Skylou, the $2 favourite, began from the No. 1 barrier and was beaten for early pace before moving to the breeze and wilting to finish in last position, 91m behind the winner.<\/p>\n
The Bond stable and Roberts kept up the good work by scoring an easy victory with three-year-old Bettor Fortune, the $2.30 favourite who beat Beatitlikebeca over 2242m at Narrogin on Saturday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX Talented New Zealand-bred five-year-old Lusaka relished a rare opportunity to set the pace…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-28012","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\/28012","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=28012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}