By Kyle Galley
The feature Warragul Pacing Cup was called off mid-race on Sunday in a sensational first for one of Victoria’s longest running country feature events.
Six-year-old Cranbourne pacer Im Eugene crashed to the track when travelling in the front half of the field at the 1200 metre mark, having choked down, where a horse over-races and temporarily loses oxygen.
Driver James Herbertson, who was uninjured in the incident, quickly assisted his horse until track officials arrived at the scene, and were able to clear Im Eugene of its gear and sulky and aid it back to its feet.
Remaining competitors continued the race, however on the order of stewards eased up their charges before the race again reached the point where Im Eugene lay on the inside of the track.
Im Eugene was quickly on its feet and led back to the stabling block, without suffering any injury.
Stewards declared that the 2627 metre contest would not be rerun, given horses had already travelled a fair amount of the race distance.
Incidents such as this are extremely rare in trotting – there has been only one other such example of a horse choking down in a race at Warragul in the last decade.
The Warragul Pacing Cup will now be re-run on Monday 10 June.
“Being on the King’s Birthday public holiday allows the club to promote the race again to the local community,” HRV’s Head of Racing Greg Gangle said.
“It will be programmed as a new race open to nominations, with preference in field selection given to horses that contested the heats run for the original series, based on finishing position/mile rate.
The race purse of $17,500 will remain as previously advertised.
