Weir loves the bush beat and Warrnambool's the place for him to shine

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This was published 7 years ago

Weir loves the bush beat and Warrnambool's the place for him to shine

By Michael Lynch
Updated

Champion trainer Darren Weir has had group 1 and feature race winners from Brisbane to Adelaide, climaxing last November when Prince of Penzance scored an upset win in the biggest race of all, the Melbourne Cup.

He regularly shares the stage with the bluebloods at Flemington and Randwick, but the man from the bush is never more at ease than when shooting the breeze and enjoying the atmosphere at a country race meeting.

Warrnambool Cup hope: Master Zephyr, ridden by Dean Yendall, streaks home to win the Terang Cup.

Warrnambool Cup hope: Master Zephyr, ridden by Dean Yendall, streaks home to win the Terang Cup. Credit: Rob Gunstone

So it is hardly surprising that Victoria's three-day Warrnambool festival should be at the top of his list of favourite meetings.

In 2014 Weir achieved the ultimate success at the Bool when he drove home with the keys to a Mercedes – the prize for any trainer who sent out four winners at the meeting as well as a winner of one of the feature events.

That year Akzar's success in the Warrnambool Cup sealed the prize for the Ballarat-based handler, and he followed up 12 months later in the Cup with another import in the OTI-owned Tall Ship, who followed up a win in the Terang Cup with an easy triumph in the Bool's biggest flat race.

This year Weir is hoping to make it a hat-trick in the Cup and he has three live contenders to go to war with in the Thursday flat race feature.

English import Master Zephyr, who won the Terang Cup like Tall Ship, heads the list, which also contains soft ground specialist Falago and Master of Arts, who scored in his lead-up at Morphettville in mid- April.

Not that Weir is ignoring the other feature races, as he has four still engaged in Wednesday's Wangoom Handicap, the 1200-metre dash often referred to by country racing fans as the "Newmarket of the Bush".

They are headed by the ex-Peter Moody-trained Thermal Current, a recent listed race scorer at Mornington, along with another couple of ex-Moody sprinters in Mirage and Noela's Choice as well as three-year-old Stellar Collision, a three-time metropolitan winner from five city starts.

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For many the Bool is all about the jumpers, and while the champion handler has no standout hurdlers or steeplechasers this year – certainly nothing like his former top line hurdler Gotta Take Care – Weir will still look to make his presence felt in the three maiden hurdles on Tuesday's opening card in which he will saddle runners in each race.

"I love the Warrnambool carnival. I was supporting it when I was a shit-kicker starting out," said Weir with a grin, pointing out that it is no different now he is the Premier metropolitan handler.

"I have three jumpers in the first three races and they are all in good shape so hopefully they will run well.

"I love the jumpers, they are slow horses, they are not stars that's why they are in maiden races [but] they have all been poking along heading towards this carnival to start their jumping careers and hopefully one of them will do the right thing."

Weir is a great believer that schooling horses over obstacles freshens them up and also gives a new lease of life to gallopers who may not have many prospects on the level.

"A horse like Gotta Take Care, he won a heap of races in town, a listed event, he was a great horse who won 20 races. He wouldn't have won 20 races if he didn't have jumps racing. No way in the world, it switched him on. It gave him longevity. It's great for them. We school them all the time, it gets them in such good order, it is just a good part of their training to keep them interested."

Weir, who has a satellite stable in the seaside town, will have an army of other contenders at the Bool, but is honest enough to say that only a handful will have been specifically targeted at their races.

"Master Zephyr looked more impressive in the Terang Cup than what Tall Ship did, but leading up to the race Tall Ship was more impressive than Master Zephyr," he said.

"They are probably very similar horses. He's very small, but he got down and galloped well the other day. We needed to see that. Terang and Warrnambool was always the go and he really let down well.

"The surface won't worry him. He would need to switch off, he's a bit like Tall Ship, he over travels a bit. If they are going to be good horses they need to switch off."

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