Last dance for 12 race-winning mare at Blenheim

[Wandering Eyes]

By Michael Guerin

Dance Till Dawn gets the last chance to add the icing to her career cake at Blenheim this weekend.

The seven-year-old mare is preparing for her final weekend of racing before being retired to stud, in foal to Downbytheseaside. She is the third mum-to-be from the Dunns’ Diamond Racing team to finish racing this month, following on from Follow Your Dream and I Dream Of Jeannie.

Dance Till Dawn has had a superb career for Team Dunn, having won 12 of her 88 starts and earned over $300,000 in stakes.

“She has done a wonderful job and held her form for a really long time,” says driver John Dunn.

“But this is her last weekend and she will get two cracks at winning.”

Dance Till Dawn is a newcomer to the circuit and trying to continue the Dunn’s domination of the feature pacing races after It’s Tough won them both days at Nelson last weekend.

“He has gone into the paddock so our next decision with him is whether we give him a long spell now or a shorter one and set him for the Country Cups Final.”
 
With Its Tough out of the way it does make it easier for Dance Till Dawn to overcome her 20m handicap today but Dunn says it can still be a big ask.

“When they are off that sort of handicap it often depends how the race is run.

“Clearly she is good enough to win coming off a good second a Motukarara last start in a stronger field but if they step and run off the front the one I am driving Bryce’s Meddle will also be hard to catch.”

“He went two good races at Westport and has three wins on the grass.”

As tends to be the case with our grass track Cups, or in today’s case the Cup Prelude (6.20pm), the field is even and with the grass tracks being so flat it can make coming wide difficult.

Earlier in the meeting John Dunn says two trotters from the stable can win, although one of them can be extremely hard to predict.

“We have Rock Lobster (R5, No.15) off 10m and she has been going good races so she has to be a good each way chance.

“And we have Tyron’s Strapping Lad in Race 8 and he would win on his best form but he is a really hard horse to follow.

“He won so well last start and has a lot of ability but some times his concentration wanders.

“He might grow out of that and string a few wins together but at the moment he still has that mental immaturity.”

To see today’s Marlborough fields click here 

 

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