In recent years horses like Mister Zion and On Thunder Road have started their careers as pacers before switching to a lucrative trotting career. Mister Zion won a Group One event as a pacer and trotter and while Menangle harness racing trainer Shane Tritton has no plans to set Gaius Caesar for feature trotting events at this stage, he is hoping the three time Group One winning pacer can make a successful switch to trotting.
Gaius Caesar needs to trial as a trotter on two occasions and the nine-year-old gelding completed the first of those on Tuesday afternoon at Tabcorp Park Menangle. Gaius Caesar won the trial in two minutes and covered his final 400 metres in 27.5 seconds. Tritton is happy with Gaius Caesar’s progress and is hoping the change can rejuvenate the 131-start veteran.
“Trotting has always made up a large part of his training programme even when Darren Binskin was training him, so he is a very fluent trotter,” Tritton said.
“It has always been in the back of my mind to try something like this with him and recently I wanted to use him as a galloping pacemaker for one of my two year olds and all he wanted to do was trot. Gaius Caesar ended up trotting the entire session and beat the pacer so it got me thinking seriously about giving it a go.”
Gaius Caesar won the Bohemia Crystal FFA, Cordina Sprint and Len Smith Mile in 2013 and defeated some talented pacers including Caribbean Blaster, Mah Sish and Excel Stride.
He has won 35 races pacing and has $546,935.
“His racing style would be better suited to trotting rather than pacing because he is so dour and just keeps on grinding away so races over further than a mile would be right up his alley.
“He is working as well as a trotter I have in stable at the moment called No Potato and he will be racing this Saturday night so if he keeps on trotting and doesn’t want to naturally switch back to a pace I think he’ll make a good go of it.”
Tritton confirmed the son Julius Caesar would find himself on a tough mark as a trotter as his pacing wins would be counted towards his trotting assessment.
“As I understand it he would be very highly assessed in Australia because his pacing assessment would just switch over to a trotting assessment but he would still be viewed as a trotting maiden in New Zealand which brings up a whole other possibility.
“He has been shod differently but I actually think he trots better when shod as a pacer which is strange but I worked him recently and he trotted a mile in two minutes, got home in 58 seconds and wasn’t pushed to do it. So while he still needs to improve on the clock I am happy with how he is progressing.”
Gaius Caesar last raced on December 19th when he finished sixth behind Lettucerockthem at Menangle.
Greg Hayes