Monday, March 11, 2019
Lil Black Jess and Villa Maldini figured in Tara Raceway’s first winning dead-heat of the year when they crossed the line together in last Wednesday’s Trackside Meats Stake (400 m) at Tara Raceway’s time-graded meeting.
Owned and trained at Dunolly by Rick Boehm, Lil Black Jess set up a nice lead early from box one although Villa Maldini was always going to be hard to hold out when working into second spot off the back.
And that’s how the grade six race panned out, Villa Maldini storming home and in the end sharing the spoils with Lil Black Jess.
Raced by Michael Kemp, son of Villa Maldini’s breeder, Sindy Colpoys of Coleraine, and trained by her husband Steve, the dead-heat is the first they’ve been associated with.
By Dyna Villa out of Mizzy Maldini, the black dog’s success was his first since the end of 2017, Steve Colpoys saying that it had been great to finally see a good run from him after an injury interrupted career.
“Look, he’s always had ability but he’s a really stressful dog. That, coupled with an ongoing issue with split webbing, has certainly curtailed his career,” he said.
“Also, another accident when he was being exercised resulted in him being off the scene for nine months. But I like to persevere with my dogs and I have to say that the introduction of time-graded racing at Mount Gambier that caters for dogs like him has been a terrific innovation.”