Well known harness racing trainer Wayne Honan is pressing ahead with plans to try his former star pacer Flightpath again and at this stage everything is on track.
It is over 75 months since the son of Artsplace set foot on a racetrack but the eleven year old has had a lot of solid groundwork in his preparation for a return to racing.
"It has been in the back of my mind to try him again for quite a while but with him being at stud I have never taken it any further."
However when it looked like I had sold the farm earlier this year and he wasn't going to stand this year, I thought then it would be a good time to see if still had what it takes to be competitive." Wayne said.
Flightpath was a star two year old, taking out the $314,000 Australasian Breeders Crown Final at Ballarat and after a run of issues over the next two years following that great win, he was retired to stud the winner of twelve lifetime for stakes totaling $290,694.
Flightpath was well received in his initial two years at stud and although the mares weren't top class they were nice middle of the road mares.
He left 23 winners from his first crop including such good types as Alphitania 1:57.3 ($71,645) Tulhurst Sarsha 1:55.8 ($58,545) and Flytomo 1:58.3 ($ 53,783) and seemed off to a good start.
The talented Quagmire 1:56.1 ($53,165) quickly followed in year two but then a decision to move the stallion away from Golden Gait Stud did the horse more damage than good with the quality of the mares dropping while the number of mares served dropped bigtime as well.
Still there are plenty of Flightpath progeny doing a good job with the latest being Lucy Lamb who is unbeaten in four todate and goes around in the $30,600 Eugowra Cup later today.
Wayne has being varying Flightpath's training as he gets closer to a resumption with a view to keeping his mind on the job.
" I have started swimming him again which he loves and I have been driving him around the farm in his work as well.
" In the next couple of weeks I will head down to Sydney and look for a trial for him."
" If he handles that okay I will start looking for a suitable race to kick off this campaign," Wayne said.
It should be an interesting few weeks as we watch to see if the talented Flightpath still has what it takes to be competitive on the track.
Harnesslink Media