Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX
New Zealand-bred four-year-old Lusaka is destined to graduate to Free-For-All company and be a prolific winner, according to Deni Roberts who drove the Sweet Lou pacer to a superb victory in the $23,000 Cowden The Insurance Brokers Pace over 2130m at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
Lusaka was the $4.30 second fancy from barrier No. 6, with the polemarker Machs Bettor the hot $1.55 favourite. But Lusaka carried far too many guns for Machs Bettor and beat his frontrunning rival by a length after coming from eighth in the nine-horse field at the bell to hit the front 250m from home, with a final 400m in 27.9sec.
“He is going to make his way to Free-For-Alls when he probably will have to be driven as a sit-sprinter,” said Roberts. “When you go up in grade and you don’t draw (favourably) you need to drive like that.
“This was one of his best runs in this campaign. He ran a nice half and really put them away. After I pulled him out (about 850m from home) I thought this was the wrong move because the tempo lifted, and I had to hang out there.
“I couldn’t make ground for a bit but once we got to the back straight the breeze horse (Franco Ecuador) and the one-one horse (Dominus Factum) started to drop off, so we were then able to get into the race. It was a super run.”
Lusaka, trained by Greg and Skye Bond, boasts a 50 per cent success rate, 14 wins as well as nine placings from 28 starts for stakes of $176,958. He raced only once in New Zealand for a win over Rakero Raider in a 1980 event at Addington in July 2022. Two months later he finished third behind the brilliant Never Ending in the Golden Slipper at Gloucester Park.