NZ Cup a factor in Leap To fame's next start

By Adam Hamilton 

New Zealand fans should be excited about Leap To Fame’s surprise next assignment at Albion Park on Saturday night.

Trainer-driver Grant Dixon turned heads when he opted to run his champion pacer from a 30m handicap in a standing-start 2138m race this week.

He admitted a longer term vision for November’s IRT NZ Trotting Cup was part of the reason for it.

It will be just the second time in Leap To Fame’s 65-start career he has raced from a stand.

The other was a win from a 20m handicap in the Flashing Red Discretionary at Albion Park on June 8, last year.

“There’s a few reasons for racing again this week,” Dixon said. “Looking ahead to the NZ Cup is one of them. It’s another chance to show him the tapes and see how he handles it. We may not get another suitable chance to do that.

“We looked ahead to the Flashing Red again, but he’d get 30m in that, too and it’d be a much stronger race than he faces this week.

“He’d be off 30m in the Redcliffe Cup as well and it’s not really a suitable race for him.”

Dixon felt Leap To Fame, who won narrowly but impressively first-up at Albion Park last Saturday night, needed more racing before the Inter Dominion starts on July 5.

“I thought he should’ve won a bit easier and that he’d need two more runs, not just one, before the heats.

“That really meant we had to back-up this week and it made more sense on a few levels to go to this (standing start) race rather than a 1660m mobile. This will be a better conditioning run.

“It means he can run this week, have two weeks to his third run back and then another two weeks before the first round of heats.”