Country Championships await Dave's Man of Peace

By Matt Malone

Daily Advertiser

CHAMPIONSHIP bound Man Of Peace will head to the paddock a winner after another strong victory at Murrumbidgee Turf Club on Monday.
 
Wagga trainer Dave Heywood is confident the four year- old will measure up in the Southern District heat of the Country Championships after winning his fourth race.
 
Man Of Peace ($2.50) was ridden a treat by apprentice jockey Nyssa Burrells to take out the R H Blake & Co Benchmark 65 Handicap (1400m).
 
It was also a heat of the Racing NSW’s Rising Star series for apprentice jockeys. Man Of Peace finished fourth in the Snake Gully Cup at Gundagai earlier this month and Heywood will now head to the son of Zariz for a short spell.
 
“He’ll go to the paddock now for four weeks,” Heywood said.
 
“I’ll bring him back and we’ll be setting him for the country championships, now we know he can run a good 1400 metres.
 
“That’s why I run him in the Snake Gully Cup, to see if he was up to it, ability wise and if he could run the distance. He ran a ripper of a race.”
 
It was almost not to be for Man Of Peace at Wagga on Monday as Heywood had trouble finding an apprentice to ride. Blaike McDougall was originally down to ride Man Of Peace but suffered an ankle injury at Hawkesbury on Friday. Burrells was the only apprentice available and Heywood was glad he put her on.
 
“I’m bloody rapt with the win after all the drama I had with jockeys,” Heywood said.
 
“I didn’t know where I was going to get one but as it turned out, Nyssa rode him an absolute treat.”
 
Some reassurance from good friend Rodney Quinn, now part of Racing NSW’s apprentice mentoring program, convinced Heywood she would not let him down.
 
“I looked up her record and couldn’t believe how many winners she had ridden,” he said.
 
“I rang Rodney Quinn and he said she had ridden some very good races on horses that can gallop.
 
“She’s a good rider.”

Meantime, it was a days of ups and downs for Wagga trainer Gary Colvin at Murrumbidgee Turf Club. Colvin experienced the highs and lows of racing in the Kristopher Graydon Jewellers Class One Handicap (1300m).
 
Promising three-year-old Forever Newyork ($4.60) made it two wins on the trot as he stormed down the outside to win impressively. Unfortunately, his stablemate, Couldnotbebetter, broke down at about the 800 metres and it is understood he had to be humanely euthanised.
 
Couldnotbebetter, owned by John Chamberlain, was also a three-year-old with a bright future and had won one of his six starts prior to Monday’s event.