"It won't be easy" - It's Tough's mission in tonight's Country Championship Final

By Michael Guerin

The $100,000 Hydroflow Country Cup Championship has never been won off a 30m handicap before but John Dunn knows it can be.

Because Team Dunn has kind of done it before.

The premiership leaders head into tonight’s big final at Addington (9.07pm)with Bruntwood Brigade off a 10m handicap and favourite It’s Tough sharing a 30m backmark.

That sort of handicap is difficult in any race but particularly in the Country Cups Championships, with a full field of fit and race-hardened horses.

The 3200m of the final is won on average in a sub 4 minute time with two front markers in The Falcon and Charlie Brown having won it while last year Betterthancash overcame a 10m handicap to win.

But three years ago the Dunn-trained Mighty Looee not only overcame a 20m starting point but galloping away and turning that into more of a 30 or even 40m handicap before staging a remarkable recovery.

Which makes Dunn feels a bit better about the task he faces with It’s Tough tonight.

He looks every inch a New Zealand Cup horse in the making but if the leaders step and run hard tonight he faces an enormous task.

“We all know how hard it is to win off big handicaps these days, especially in a field like this,” says Dunn.

“But he is a really, really good horse and he has a couple of things in his favour.

“Most of the other favourites, apart from Bruntwood Brigade and Iron Brigade [both 10m], are back on the 20m or 30m marks which means a lot of the really good horses are back with us.

“So not only are we not giving them a huge start but there are likely to be some moves from them.

“And there are only three horses on the front line, so you could be optimistic and say the 30m is more like 20m. 

“But it still won’t be easy.”

Put It’s Tough on the back of the right horse at the 1600m mark and he is still the horse to beat but ironically a slowly-run first half of the race could make life harder on him because then the leaders won’t be coming back to the backmarkers who still might be reluctant to move too early over the 3200m.

As always, it should be a great spectacle in what has become of the best new races invented in harness racing.

While Team Dunn has been flying they could struggle to win any of tonight’s other features on a stacked night, with no runners in the Garrards’ Sires’ Stakes, the Two-Year-Old Trotting Stakes or the Heather Williams Memorial.

But they do have two smart youngsters in Travel Agent and Metro Boy in the Avon City Ford Welcome Stakes (7.38pm).

“We really like both ours as horses and Travel Agent was excellent at Invercargill last start,” says John.

“But the two horses who beat him that day, Roger That and Chiggsy, are in again this week and they have to be hard to beat.

“I wouldn’t be stunned if Travel Agent was still able to win though.”