Mixed photo finish success for Kyneton trainer George Osborne

And no one knows that better than Kyneton trainer George Osborne following a mixed day at his home track on Thursday.

The astute trainer was on the good and bad end of consecutive photo finishes in the last two races on the program.

Osborne came up short with the luckless Villa Sarchi, who only narrowly failed to run down Citaleon in the benchmark 68 over 1112m.

The seven-year-old gelding was attempting to end a 1097-day drought between wins - a dry spell sprinkled with near misses.

Comfort of sorts arrived for Osborne in the final race, when Revhead, ridden by Billy Egan, landed the money as favourite.

The four-year-old gelding's second career win in 12 starts was a close-call, with Revhead switching off in the straight, nearly playing into the hands of Mitchell Aitken aboard the Brent Stanley-trained Dexa Bill, who motored home for second.

The official margin was .1 of a length in both races, providing more than a few anxious moments for Osborne.

"He (Revhead) is as cunning as a fox, he was clocking off really early, he just wanted to go home," he said.

"All credit to Billy, he rode the horse terrific from a wide gate. He settled and came across from a wide gate, took his time and coaxed him as much as he could. and he got away with it.

"He's got a few tricks. Probably the only thing I can defend him with is that he was second-up and didn't have a trial this time around and he stepped up to 1450m and he's carting 63kg.

"They've all got to cart it, but it's plenty of weight.

"Now he's got to go up a grade too, so that's going to make things a little bit difficult. We may have to venture a bit wider."

Revhead, who broke his maiden at his seventh start on the Ballarat synthetic last June, is by Testa Rossa out of Whitehousewhispers, and had run three seconds in four runs since that win.

A relieved jockey said the winning post had come up just in time.

"When I initially kicked at the top of the straight, I thought I had the race comfortably," Egan said.

"Then I knew I was coming back to them pretty quickly when he started to slow down."

Osborne must be wondering if Villa Sarchi's day will ever come again after being on the wrong end of a photo finish.

He is the three-time city-winning gelding's fourth trainer, but he is yet to notch up a win in eight starts for two placings since arriving at Kyneton.

Osborne is still optimistic of a breakthrough emerging, even for a few moments thinking the breakthrough had arrived.

"I have to be honest, when they went past the post live I thought he got beat, but when the slow motion (replay) came in to play, I recall a horse I had here a couple of seasons ago that had the same thing and it won," he said.

"I had a look at the photo and I couldn't have seen a closer thing to a dead heat in my life - it was just the narrowest of margins.

"He still remains unwinnable for the last three years - we will try again in a couple of weeks."

Osborne had to settle for another second earlier in the day with Magnalicious, who was ridden by Alana Kelly.

The margin between the four-year-old mare and the winner Claudia Shiver was not quite as tight as those later in the day, but still only 1.25-lengths, giving the daughter of Magnus her third placing in four career starts.

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: