Faith Not Fear outstanding in Sires' Stakes Final

By Michael Guerin

In racing courage comes wrapped in all shapes and sizes.

And it sure helps with you mix with it the sheer speed of a pacer like Faith Not Fear, who led throughout to win the $200,000 Woodlands Stud Sires’ Stakes Final at Addington on Tuesday afternoon.

Having just his fifth career start the little brother to millionaire pacers Captains Mistress and Merlin easily held the lead for driver Sam Ottley and home straight leg speed did the rest as he held trailer Bamm Bamm and the winner’s arch rival Tour Party at bay.

His win defied a mystifying drift during which he got out to $2.40 on fixed odds and $2.80 the tote after starting the day at $1.75 fixed.

And while the punters who took the oddly inflated odds had little reason for concern that is where the courage came into play.

Because trainers Hayden and Amanda Cullen, who selected Faith Not Fear from the sales, and Ottley had a pre-race choice to make.

Drawn the ace with the fastest horse in the race they could easily have handed the early lead to Tour Party and planned to outsprint him up the Addington passing lane.

But they decided to hold the front and put total faith in their horse and had that plan come unstuck with a change of tactics in such a revered Group 1, you just know the critics would have been up and about.

But there were no critics, just a super bright future for the valuable colt owned by father and son Dennis and Mark Dunford.

“When I first saw barrier 1 last Wednesday I was stoked but then we had some thinking to do,” said Ottley, who suffered a shock defeat in the same race last year driving Jumal.

“In the end he held the front pretty easily and even when Seth [Hill, driving Scoundrel] came up outside him I just let them set the pace because this fella was just so relaxed.

“Every time Seth chirped his horse up this fella wanted to know if it was time to go but I was just saying to him, not yet, not yet buddy, just wait.”

That the Cullens had the guts to suggest holding the lead when it would have been easy to take a trail, should not surprise.

They have been one of the standout stables of harness racing in the last few years, emerging from the shadows of former partnerships to be serious big race players and now some of the best in the industry.

And now they may have on their hands the horse every growing stable needs, the x-factor young pacer who can take them to all the big carnivals and possibly mature into an open class $1 million race winner like his big sister and brother.

Faith Not Fear has one of the most exciting futures in New Zealand harness racing all ahead of him.

It is amazing where courage, and freakish leg speed, can take you.