Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX
An elated Stuart McDonald declared the sky was the limit for inexperienced four-year-old Mister Smartee after driving him to a superb victory in the $50,000 Westside Auto Wholesale Four and Five-Year-Old Championship at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
Mister Smartee, the $1.50 favourite, smashed the race record when he rated 1.54.3 over the 2130m and beat five-year-old and $26 chance Alcopony.
His time lowered the race record rate of 1.54.6 set by superstar pacer Chicago Bull when, as a five-year-old, he won this event from Maxentius in 2018.
Mister Smartee, who now boasts a record of nine wins from eleven starts for earnings of $138,380, gave champion trainer Gary Hall Snr a record seventh win in the Four and Five-Year-Old Championship, following his successes with Love Of Glory (1990), Zakara (1991), Make The Rules (1999), Northview Punter (2014), Chicago Bull (2018) and Texas Tiger (2021).
Hall will now be looking forward to preparing Mister Smartee for rich feature events later this year, including the $450,000 WA Pacing Cup on November 8, the $50,000 Four-Year-Old Championship (November 15), the $125,000 Four-Year-Old Classic (November 22) and the $200,000 Golden Nugget (December 13).
Mister Smartee began from the No. 6 barrier on Friday night, and he raced three wide early to move to the breeze after 500m, with the polemarker Skylord ($4.40) setting a solid pace.
McDonald then was content to rate Mister Smartee in the breeze after a lead time of 36.8sec. and opening quarter of 29.6sec. The second and third 400m sections were covered in 28sec. and 27.5sec. and Mister Smartee forged to the front on the home turn and won by just over a half-length from Alcopony, who ran home solidly from sixth at the bell. Hale Saint Louie ($61) impressed in finishing strongly after racing three back on the pegs.
“Mister Smartee was super; he is everything I thought he was,” said McDonald. “It’s not that often that I’m so confident, and he backed up my confidence. They don’t get much more impressive than that.
“It was a massive run on a night that they were not running fast times. He faced the breeze, put the pressure on, did the chasing, and in the end he did it easily.
“He was cruising going into the bell when I was putting the pressure on. They then went for a bit of a sprint, and he dropped the bit, and I had to make sure he got going again. He always felt he was going to beat the leader. He just kept going; there’s no bottom to him.
“He is still very raw, talent wise. He used to be a horse who got over keen, and now he is getting a bit too relaxed. We’ve got to find the happy medium with him, and when we do, we will have one hell of a racehorse.”