Top horses on show between races at Menangle

5 December 2020

CHAMPION horses ‘away’ from the track are ready to steal the show at Tabcorp Park Menangle tonight.

Rehoming of pacers and trotters, when their racing careers are over, has been a hot topic in racing circles over the past couple of seasons.

The good news is that our sport has done something about finding happy homes for our ‘retirees’.

And some of those results will be on show between races at Menangle tonight.

You may have done your cash, or even backed a winner, on horses like Stitched Up, Artistic Flite, Mouse In The House, Gotbackwhatsmine and Hawkowl in the past.

Many of them have had more-than-handy careers on the track too.

Mouse In The House, for instance, had 16 wins in 60 race starts and won the four-year-old Breeders Challenge final at Menangle in a scintillating 1:50.7 mile rate, banking more than $220,000.

His new owner Kate Fitzgibbon currently has ‘Mouse’ going really well under saddle and he has been competing in some cross country and show jumping events this year.

He will be out competing under saddle in 2021 but will be one of those showing us his new-found skills at Menangle tonight.

A new body has been formed to ensure these horses find something to do when they are no longer heading for the races.

The NSW Harness Racing Standardbred Re-Homing Company is already making massive inroads into giving these retired horses a new finish line.

Led by HRNSW board member Peter Nugent, the company has directors from most sectors of the industry including Robert Marshall and Michael Brown (Club Menangle), Marie Neil, Julie Maughan and Denis Conroy and tonight will announce the appointment of Amiee Cupitt as a full-time administrator for the company.

They have already launched their own website, www.harnessrehomingnsw.com, which walks owners and trainers through the steps they need to take to go about finding a happy home for their horse, or horses.

It should be a great night’s harness racing too with the return to racing of Menangle specialist Cash N Flow, who did string together 12 successive Menangle wins before a failure in the Victoria Cup in a hit-and-run mission to Victoria.

Cash N Flow has champion reinsman Luke McCarthy back on board tonight and is a short-priced favourite to resume his Menangle streak as a $1.40 favourite with stablemate Replaced Eye regarded as his biggest danger.