There’s only one person Cran Dalgety takes orders from. And when she speaks, he listens.
So when his wife Chrissie told him early this week that he was being too soft on his star pacer Christen Me and needed to have him at the races, Dalgety did what any sane husband would do and decided to race in Monday’s Ashburton Flying Stakes.
“When the boss speaks, it pays to do what you’re told,” a tongue in cheek Dalgety said.
But that wasn’t the only issue Dalgety had to deal with.
Just down the road his brother-in-law, Tim Butt was preparing his star pacer Field Marshal to resume in the very same race, and he has been doing so with the knowledge that Dexter Dunn would be available to take the drive on his multiple Group One winner with Christen Me earmarked to miss the race.
“Dexter made me ring Tim and tell him that he couldn’t drive his horse. So that was fun.”
All joking aside though, Dalgety has sort of been forced into racing this week by the continued thriving of Christen Me at home and the potential risk of having so long in between starts.
It would have been 31 days in between races had he not lined up with week and with the Cup Trial a potential non-even this year due to what could be low numbers, it was a risk he wasn’t willing to take.
“The horse is on top of the world at the moment, he’s absolute thriving and that made the decision a little bit easier.
“We won’t treat it any different than another race either, I don’t tell Dexter what to do and I’m not going to start this week either.
“He knows what we are trying to achieve and I’m sure he will do the best by the horse.”
Eight horses have accepted for the final field for the Flying Stakes on Monday with Quick As A Trick a dual acceptor into another race. Mark Purdon and Natalie Rasmussen have a strong hand again with their three leading contenders; Lazarus, Smolda and Have Faith In Me.
There will be plenty of interest in their stable earlier in the day though with class mares Dream About Me and Piccadilly Princess both tackling an intermediate grade race while with another eight runners engaged across the programme last season’s leading stable looks to have really kicked into gear for the season.
Monday’s other feature, the Ashburton Trotting Flying Mile will see the resumption of reigning Horse of the Year, Monbet.
The Greg and Nina Hope trained trotter is on a march to the Dominion Handicap and looked solid when running second in a workout on the Ashburton track during the week.
He’s drawn barrier seven in the one mile event while his apparent main rival, Marcoola has drawn three on the second row.
Matt Markham