KYNETON trainer Greg Leight hopes his emerging trotter Arrested might next season make a handy country cups performer.
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The five-year-old gelding brought up win number four this season for the Group 1-winning trainer at Ballarat's Bray Raceway on Friday night.
It was a memorable night for the 40-plus-year hobby trainer, who quinellad the event with Arrested ($5.40) and the three-year-old Your Nicked ($7.60).
The Leight-trained pair topped a handy field, led by the Chris Svanosio-trained favourite Kyvalley Finn ($3.50), who was chasing back-to-back victories and finished third, and the handy Lisa Miles-trained gelding Needabacardi.
Leight said he had headed to Ballarat with reasonable expectations.
"We were quietly confident that both horses would go well, but you are never that confident as there is always plenty there to beat you," Leight said.
"That's his fourth win for the season.
"We'll keep him ticking along - a horse like him, who is such a good standing start horse, we will eventually put him away for a little while and look at bringing him back to try and win a country cup next season.
"That's the plan with both he and Your Nicked because they are both nice standing start horses and I think they will work up to that class no worries."
Leight, who experienced his sole Group 1 success with Dalmont Jo in the VicBred Super Series Final for two-year-old fillies in 2003, said he tried to avoid clashing in the same race with Arrested and Your Nicked, albeit sometimes it was inevitable.
"They are both on the same marks and if you don't race them together there is really not much for them," he said.
"We tried to avoid if we can, but a quinella is always nice.
"There was a couple of handy horses in the race and he won fairly comfortably in the end I thought."
Leight is one of about a half dozen trainers, who use the trotting track inside the Kyneton racecourse as their training base, in a racing landscape dominated by gallops trainers, headed by George Osborne, who is enjoying a phenomenal season with 38 winners.
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His small team of five horses, which includes last month's Warragul Trotters Cup victor Law Legend, Daddywho and as yet unraced two-year-old, have won a combined 33 races between them, including nine this season.
"There's only about five or six of us trainers left here at Kyneton - years ago we had about 20 trainers here, but over time they have have slowly but surely disappeared," Leight said.
"It's not a real strong training centre, it's more gallopers.
"I live about 100 metres down from the racecourse and there's probably about 150 gallopers training here of a morning and maybe half a dozen trotters.
"Hopefully we are holding the harness racing camp together."
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