Heywood shot to the lead of the Southern District Racing Association (SDRA) Winter Series when Leucura scored a dominant six length at Narrandera on Sunday.

Leucura smashed the track record in the process, with his time of 1.34.47 eclipsing the previous mark by two seconds.

“He was super impressive,” Heywood said.

“He did it so easy too.”

Leucura went straight to the front for jockey Richard Bensley and made all of the speed.

Heywood now has the $30,000 Forbes Cup (1600m) on August 7 and the $45,000 Narromine Cup Showcase (1600m) on August 13 in mind for Leucura, who ran second in both races last year.

“At this stage, we’ll probably aim at the Forbes Cup and then see what happens,” he said.

After producing such a dominant performance from in front on Sunday, Heywood is keen to lead on Leucura more often.

“The way he went, yeah I think so. He can overrace a bit in those mile races but he got in the right rhythm and just travelled,” Heywood said. 

“Two starts ago we nearly did it at Canterbury and we kicked ourselves afterwards that we didn’t.”

Heywood took over the SDRA Winter Series lead from Trevor Sutherland.

The final three races in the series will be held at Wagga (August 1) in place of Albury, Gundagai (August 6) and Wagga (August 31).

Leaderboard

Chris Heywood 20

Trevor Sutherland 18

Geoff Duryea 16

Peter Maher 10

Nick Olive 8