Todd Smart hopes breakthrough week can end with another winner at Gilgandra

Todd Smart celebrated his first city winner this week and the Canberra trainer can continue the momentum at Queanbeyan on Sunday.

Canberra trainer Todd Smart is keen to end a breakthrough week with a country winner days after his free-striding gelding Washington Tower’s ran his rivals off their tired legs to win at Warwick Farm.

Smart’s lightly-raced five-year-old son of Whittington won him his first race in town on Wednesday.

“It was a bloody good feeling. We’ve placed a lot in town but we’ve finally cracked it now,” Smart said.

“It’s been a really good week and things fell into place for us on Wednesday.

“He went forward and that’s how you have to ride him, you just need to keep letting him roll.”

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Smart thinks Loose Love can continue the stable’s winning run at Gilgandra on Sunday.

The son of former crack miler Turn Me Loose was scheduled to compete closer to home but with Queanbeyan called off on Saturday morning, Smart is weighing up the pros and cons of a 320km round trip on Sunday.

Most, if not all, of Smart’s rival trainers will be praying he decides to take the Sunday off given Loose Love’s hold on the Kennards Hire Parks Class 2 Handicap (1600m).

Smart’s three-year-old ran out an easy winner in the nation’s capital on April 22 leading to an successful but still honourable tilt at the MTC Guineas nine days ago at Wagga.

Todd Smart enjoyed a breakthrough city win at Warwick Farm on Wednesday and he’s hoping for more success at Queanbeyan on Sunday. Picture: Jenny Evans

Loose Love, should he arrive on the day, will be having his first look at a track that is variously described as unique and tricky thanks to its unusual configuration.

“He’ll come out neutral but he can be handier from that gate and he’s won on the quick back up and we’ve done this on purpose,” Smart said.

“He’s a fairly highly strung horse and whatever keeps working for him we’ll keep doing.

“He had to go right back last start and he was still strong to the line.”

In the event that Loose Love does win at Gilgandra on Sunday, it would be Smart’s fourth winner in the space of his last nine runners.

Loose Love has a pedigree to excite breeding buffs.

His dam-sires read like a who’s who of some of the most influential stallions of the nineteenth and twentieth century including Miswaki, Vaguely Noble, Ribot and the antipodean immortal – Carbine.

Originally published as Todd Smart hopes breakthrough week can end with another winner at Gilgandra