An impressive team of young horses is helping top Albury trainer Brett Cavanough charge towards what should be a personal best season in the NSW southern districts.
Cavanough had trained 33 winners this season to February 3 with 30 of them coming in the SDRA, putting him on record pace to easily beat his previous best of 40 wins in the district.
His best tally on all tracks in one season is 72 winners, a figure he could also challenge if he maintains his current strike rate.
Cavanough has won nine SDRA training premierships and has been champion NSW country trainer three times.
He is again in the hunt to win a fourth NSW country title this season as he is currently running second behind titleholder Luke Griffith.
Scone based Griffith had 36 country wins to February 3, six ahead of Cavanough with Sue Grills. Neil Godbolt and the Barbara Joseph/Paul Jones partnership in equal third place with 23 wins.
In the SDRA premiership Cavanough leads by nine wins from Trevor Sutherland, the Wagga trainer who has beaten Cavanough for the title for the past two seasons.
The key to Cavanough’s resurgence this season has been his success with an excellent team of lightly-raced young horses, among them Scatcat, Just A Bullet, The Monstar and Steakandbernaise.
Between them this talented quartet have won 14 races in the SDRA this season and will be the nucleus of the big team Cavanough is preparing for the two-day Albury Cup carnival on his home track in late March.
The unbeaten Steakandbernaise, who recorded his second win from as many starts at Albury on January 31, is raced by international racing identity Richard Pegum, a long time supporter of the Cavanough stable.
“Steakandbernaise is well bred but I’m not sure how far he will get this preparation,” Cavanough said.
“He has got above-average ability and we probably won’t see the best of him until he gets to race over 2000 metres.
“He looks to be a pretty promising horse.”
Cavanough’s team for the Albury Cup carnival will also include older stable stars Niblick, Bossdon City and Price Of Glory.
Niblick won last year’s Canberra National Sprint before he gave Cavanough his first Albury Cup win in controversial circumstances.
The former Lloyd Williams-owned galloper was awarded the race after a protest involving the three placegetters after he was second past the post.
Cavanough trained a double and three seconds at the Albury meeting on January 31 but Sutherland answered him with three winners at the Carrathool Cup meeting on February 1.
Sutherland’s trio of winners included his veteran Lockmar returning to form with a 9.5 lengths victory in the Carrathool Cup.
Sutherland said Lockmar’s win gave him confidence that the nine-year-old can now be set for feature races at the Canberra Black Opal meeting leading into the Albury carnival.
"We've got the confidence now that he can compete in anything we put him in," Sutherland said.
"There's a lot of good races coming up so there's a lot of options to look at."
Lockmar, who has previously trained in Sydney by Frank Gardner, has been with Sutherland since 2011.
He had not won since his success in the 2011 Ted Ryder Cup at Wagga, spending a year in the paddock recovering from a tendon injury before he returned to racing last October.
