SIX wins from his past nine starts has seen Irymple trotter Powersofpersuasion emerge as a potential smokey for next month’s Mildura Pacing Cup.
The five-year-old from the stable of Sandra O’Connor has hit his straps in recent months and his trainer believes he can get better.
Powersofpersuasion has three consecutive wins on his home circuit, including one by three metres during last Wednesday’s meeting.
While O’Connor said he still has improvement in him, she would be over the moon if he qualifies for the Pacing Cup heats, and even makes the final on the biggest race on the Mildura calendar, set for Friday, April 4.
Leading South Australian reinsman Wayne Hill has been in the cart for each of these past six victories, and the Irymple trainer after taking a patient approach with Powersofpersuasion since he came to the stable as an 18-month-old, he has become more comfortable when racing.
“His family history says that as they get older, they get better,” O’Connor said.
“In saying that too as a two and three-year-old we really had to sit on him, but now he’s just learned how to race and is coming into his prime.
“I honestly think he’ll be a better horse next year, but we’ve really looked after him, just spaced his runs and been patient.
“We were getting a bit frustrated last time he was in work because he put up all these really good runs but he wasn’t quite achieving the levels we’d hoped.
“He progressively got better, and we did take him away for the Victorian Bred Series and they’re a lot better horses down there. Going away and racing against a better class horses I think he improved a bit.
“We’re also lucky we’ve had Wayne Hill drive him almost all of last year and I think that’s been the making of him because he could do things wrong, but last year he really found his footing.”
It’s a long way from the 18-month-old horse that first came to ownership trio O’Connor, John Hollywood, and Ken Ross.
Coming from a stable environment in Melbourne it took Powerospersuasion some time to adjust to his new surroundings but patience appears to be paying dividends.
If he is to make the heats for next month’s Pacing Cup it would be just the second O’Connor-trained horse to do so after Brookfield Ruler in 2014.
“We’d be over the moon just to make the final, but we know it’s going to be very hard,” she said.
“First of all we have to get into a heat before we can progress through to the final, and we just don’t know what horses are going to come from the bigger stables at present.
“There’s also some really good other local horses who might be in line as well.
“We took him to the Swan Hill Cup in October and that was run over 2700 metres where as Mildura is about 2600, just to see if he could handle the distance.
“He ran eighth but he was less than 10 metres from the winner and it was a pretty good field so we were pretty happy with the way he ran.”
Other cup events, including May’s Ouyen Cup, could also be on the horizon for the talented pacer.
Powersofpersuasion is set to start in Pace 8 at Mildura Harness Racing Club’s meeting on Friday night.
