Harness Racing
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A LOVE affair with trotters is the main reason Henty father and son team Greg and Grant Forrest remain heavily invested in the industry devoid of many opportunities in the Riverina.
Only five Riverina residents will be involved in the all trotters meeting Coolamon today, with the Forrests leading the charge with five horses entered.
The Forrests are forced to put in plenty of kilometres to get their team on the track, but try to have their horses peaking for the all trotters meeting at Coolamon.
"We try to prepare out horses to be at our best for this meeting as it's the closest one we can go to and we are basically flying the flag for the Riverina," Grant said.
"A lot of people aren't stupid enough to have trotters around the Riverina I suppose, and we are the only ones stupid enough.
"But we've always had a love of the square gaiter and it presents a pretty big challenge training and driving them but we've also had a fair bit of success with them in the past.
"If we didn't have that success in the trotting department we might not be training them at the moment."
Greg has trained trotters since the 1970s with group one performer Classic Comment the best.
She won 18 races and even beat the pacers in a C1 race at Maryborough in 2006.
The lightly-raced Forestspider is the pick of the Forrests team who has won two of her five races since debuting at Coolamon's meeting last year.
The four-year-old mare held the 1690m track record at Kilmore until Majestic Grace, who also races today at Coolamon, smashed her record by three seconds on Saturday, but she still holds the Australian three-year-old fillies record of 1:58.0.
Kyrellant will face her stablemate in the Bruce Wicks Memorial but will have to come off a 40 metre handicap.
She will be driven by Coolamon's Liam Armstrong, with Grant hoping he can use his home track knowledge to his advantage.
"He's driven a few of our trotters at the trials and having the knowledge of the home track, as its pretty unique track, a lot of teams can get lost there but Liam knows it like the back of his hand," Grant said.
"We are confident he will got a good job."
Jim Fury is the only other Riverina trainer with a horse engaged with Golden Path while Leigh Sutton has two drives.
The meeting has attracted a fantastic class of horse but with a lack of Riverina involvement the all trotters meeting has been criticised for providing prizemoney that can't remain in the area.
In comparison the Coolamon Pacers Cup will be run for $3000 on May 10, but Forest believes the meeting is a great way to promote the trotters and expand the sport in the region.
"We see what (Harness Racing NSW chief executive) Sam Nati is trying to do in getting more trainers to have trotters and to have a showcase of the trotters in NSW similar to the Redwood at Maryborough," Grant said.
"It is starting to grow - there aren't many that do have the trotters - but I think it will grow into something pretty decent and you might find people likes the Walkers, the Whites and the Joneses might have a trotter down the track and hopefully the trotters will grow around here."
The meeting starts at 1.02pm with a monte where horses are ridden rather than driven.