FORMER TOOWOOMBA GALLOPERS DOING THEMSELVES PROUD IN GROUP 1 COMPANY IN SYDNEY & MELBOURNE

By Graham Potter | Saturday, October 2, 2021

With the former Toowoomba galloper Incentivise carrying all before him in scintillating fashion with two successive Group 1 wins in Melbourne (in the Makybe Diva Stakes and the Turnbull Stakes) … and still seemingly about to move on to bigger and better things … another former Toowoomba galloper, Hinged, was also doing himself proud in Group 1 company in Sydney.

Trainer Michael Nolan was instrumental in guiding Hinged in the formative stages of his career, sending the daughter of Worthy Cause out for five wins and two runner-up finishes (both, by only a nostril) from the seven starts the filly contested under Nolan’s care.

As was the case with Incentivise though, cashed up purchasers from a Southern State came calling with an offer too good for Hinged’s owners to refuse. So it was that Hinged found his way to the Chris Waller stable in Sydney.

Six weeks after his last win for the Nolan stable, Hinged had his first run for Waller in the Listed Dulcify in which his caught three wide in the early part, was even wider on the turn and was then hampered in the home straight, although that interference came at a time where Hinged was not making any real progress after a fairly trying passage in his first-up run.

There was always going to be a very good chance that Hinged would derive benefit from that run, and both Chris Waller and jockey Glen Boss, who had ridden Hinged in the Dulcify, displayed a large dose of confidence in teaming up again with Hinged and not hesitating to take her straight to Group 1 company and the significant challenge presented by the Darley Flight Stakes.

In the Flight Stakes Hinged ($20) raced in midfield for a large part of the race. Hugging the rail and never going around a horse, Hinged plugged away, still with some ground to make up in the early part of the straight, but then, from just inside the 300m mark, the filly changed gears to a marked degree which saw her rail up strongly to suddenly move right into contention.

That effort proved to be too much for all but one of her rivals, the even longer priced Never Been Kissed ($41), who had made a similar forward move out wider on the track … and it was the latter who got home by 0.30 lengths from Hinged, who remained strong all the way to the line.

Just twenty minutes after the Flight Stakes, Incentivise took out the Turnbull Stakes.

Neither horse is now trained by their original trainers … Steve Tregea and Michael Nolan … but clearly the route they are following now owes something to the superb groundwork that the two Toowoomba based trainers did to get these horses up and running to the degree that they have been able to develop into Group 1 and contenders … and for that they can take a lot of credit for what is happening and what happens next.

And, of course, similarly, the Toowoomba racing fraternity will always retain their bragging rights.

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