AN ALL-TROTTING meeting at Bendigo Lord's Raceway this Friday will be special in more ways than one.
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Bendigo Harness Racing Club (BHRC) will honour a pair of legends in Gavin and Graeme Lang, with a big night of racing to be highlighted by two new Group 3 events.
Fittingly for such a significant occasion, spectators will be welcomed back to the track for the first time since March 6 after the club gained official clearance from the state government this week.
BHRC general manager Erik Hendrix stressed that due to number restrictions, all spectators must pre-book.
The early response has been fantastic with bookings for a two-course-dinner already sold out.
Limited spots are still available inside, with plenty of room still for grandstand (outside) patrons.
Hendrix said the timing could not have been better for the return of spectators to coincide with such an important race meeting.
"It should be a ripper night," he said.
"We can't complain our end, there's been a lot of work to get these two (Group 3) races up and hopefully we see a couple of track records.
"It was March 6 since we last saw crowds on the track here, so having them back will certainly add to the excitement of the night."
A tribute to the trotting icons, who died earlier this year just three weeks apart, will be highlighted by the running of the inaugural Gavin Lang Aldebaran Park Trotting Mile for two-year-old colts and geldings and the Graeme Lang Aldebaran Park Trotting Mile for two-year-old fillies.
The night will also feature a series of races named after horses associated with the Langs, including champion trotters and Inter Dominion winners Scotch Notch, True Roman and Sumthingaboutmaori, Wagon Apollo and Save Our Pennys, who won the Bendigo Trotters Cup for Gavin Lang in 2018.
The new Group 3 events are the brainchild of Aldebaran Park principal Duncan McPherson OAM, in partnership with the BHRC and Harness Racing Victoria.
Juvenile trotters very rarely race over a 'flying mile' from the mobile barrier.
These new races will provide the opportunity for two-year-old trotters to set a fast mark on one of Victoria's quickest tracks.
The winning filly and colt or gelding (one mile race for each) will have the opportunity to immediately create history and launch themselves into the Australian trotting record boo.
The current race record for two-year-old trotters is held by Aldebaran Ursula (by Swedish sire Yield Boko), who trotted a mile in 1.56.8 at Menangle in New South Wales.
Aldebaran Ursula is in the field for race 5, the Graeme Lang Aldebaran Park Trotting Mile.
The Lord's Raceway track, - widely recognized as Victoria's fastest - will enable that time to be obliterated by both the colts and fillies, given the right conditions.
Victorian breeders and stallion owners over the past decade have been investing heavily in the trotting industry both on and off the track with the importation of horses - broodmares and stallions - and also in farm and stud infrastructure
This investment has seen Australian trotting - in particular, Victorian trotting - rise to be one of the preeminent and most highly regarded sectors of world trotting and recognised in Europe, North America and New Zealand for this rapid growth in quality and speed.
"The two-year-old flying miles represent the opportunity for world-class times to be posted here in the Southern Hemisphere, thus strengthening our Australian stud book and again internationalising and globalising our racing product, while at the same time acknowledging the lifelong contributions of these two legends of our sport," said McPherson.
In Victoria there are very few programmed two-year-old trotters miles for either sex, so current best mile rates are not representative of the capabilities of the trotters.
The night will honour the champions Graeme Lang and his son Gavin.
Graeme, who died at age 87 only three weeks after his famed son Gavin, is considered a Victorian harness racing legend, having been a Gordon Rothacker Medallist, a member of the Caduceus Club's Hall of Fame, and a 2011 inductee into the Victorian Harness Racing Hall of Fame.
In more than 60 years in the sport, Graeme trained 12,395 starters, had 1822 career wins for $10.5 million in stakes.
Graeme started in trotting as a teenager in the 1950s at Watchem in the Mallee.
He dairy farmed near Warragul while training and driving, before moving to Romsey and then Melton.
He was the leading Australian driver in 1979.
He won the Victorian state trainer's premiership on five occasions and the state driver's premiership twice.
Graeme rated his champion mare Scotch Notch as the best square-gaiter produced in Australasia.
The dual Inter Dominion champion won 43 races in Australia, four in New Zealand, and a further 18 racing in the United States. Her resume included five Group Ones for earnings of $670,000.
Graeme's Lord's Raceway wins included three Bendigo Cups driving Kamwood Lad, Imathreat, and Bancoora Next, and the Bendigo Trotters Cups winners Scotch Notch 1982 (driven by Gavin) and 1983, and Save Our Pennys 2018 (driven by Gavin).
Gavin died in April, aged 61 after a battle with a rare type of lymphoma
His death drew to a close a career of 6303 victories, second only in the sport to Chris Alford.
Gavin won owners almost $50 million in stakes across more than 32,000 starts and earned the title 'Group 1 Gav' for his ability to perform in the biggest races.
At Kilmore on June 2, 1975, Lang registered his first win as a trots driver on Pensive Dream, and 32 years later he would drive his 6000th victory when steering Tell MeTales to Vicbred success in another showcase win.
Gavin's victories included his 2007 Victoria Cup with Robin Hood, three Inter Dominion Trotting Championships (True Roman, Sumthingaboutmaori and Game Bid) and an extraordinary list of Breeders Crown, Chariots Of Fire, Australian Pacing Gold, Vicbred Super Series and New South Wales Derby triumphs and innumerable country cups.
Gavin won an unprecedented 18 pacing and trotting Breeders Crown titles, with the first being with Self Denial and The Sentry in 2003 and the last with Moonshine Linda and Born To Rocknroll in 2019.
Gavin was inducted into the Victorian Harness Racing Hall of Fame in 2013, joining his father in this prestigious group.
Gavin Lang's partnership with the trotter True Roman, trained at Sebastian by Graeme Johannesen, also played a key role in his career.
Australasia's premier trotter in the 1980s, True Roman won 73 races from 135 starts, including the 1988 Inter-Dominion Championship.
The major Bendigo races that Gavin won at Lord's Raceway were two Bendigo Pacing Cups driving Aim First and Sammy Maguire and Bendigo Trotters Cups driving Scotch Notch, Kyvalley Prince and Save Our Pennys.
The two-year-old flying miles represent the opportunity for world-class times to be posted here in the Southern Hemisphere, thus strengthening our Australian stud book and again internationalising and globalising our racing product, while at the same time acknowledging the lifelong contributions of these two legends of our sport.
- Duncan McPherson
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