Todd Pollard would be greedy if wished for a better start to his training career, but Wednesday’s Ipswich meeting will present him with a new experience.
The young Brisbane trainer will have multiple runners in a race for the first time when Subterrain and All Kinds Of Folk contest the $38,000 TAB Class 4 Handicap that is the sixth race on the card.
Each head to the 1680-metre event off a win and while Pollard is happy with the way they are both going, he is a little flat they have to clash.
“I’d love to be splitting them if I could, but there’s just limited options for these sort of horses,” Pollard said.
“There are not enough races for them on a Saturday at the moment, so you’ve got limited options on the Wednesday meetings and I think they’re both definitely midweek metro horses.”
Pollard had experience having to watch multiple runners in races in his role as assistant trainer for Annabel and Rob Archibald, a role he held until branching out on his own earlier this year.
In less than two months, the 31-year-old New Zealander has trained six winners from just 17 starters, at a strike-rate of 35 percent.
“I couldn’t be happy with how it’s all panned out,” he said.
“Obviously we’re not going to keep that strike-rate intact, but it’s been a very good start and the horses have been running well,” he said.
“You can’t win them all and you lose more than you win in this game, but it’s a healthy strike-rate and a good way to kick things off.
“You need those results straight away to get you off the mark and we’re just lucky we’re having a good run of it at the moment.”
Subterrain gave Pollard a winner at just his second starter when he won over 1400m at Eagle Farm on March 25, which he followed up with victory over the same trip at the Gold Coast on April 10.
All Kinds Of Folk made the perfect start to life with Pollard when she won over 1400m at the Sunshine Coast on Anzac Day, her first start since being transferred north from Wangaratta trainers John and Chris Ledger.
The four-year-old, who ran second in the Group 3 Auraria Stakes (1800m) in April last year, opened favourite for Wednesday’s race after drawing barrier two with Ryan Maloney to ride.
“She’s a horse that’s going to go through the grades up here and hopefully from a good gate tomorrow, she gets every chance and if any rain did come, that would really bring her into it as well,” Pollard said on Tuesday.
Subterrain, who has won three of five starts and is yet to miss a place, has been freshened since his latest appearance and Pollard is hoping he can log another win before another break and a crack at some loftier goals post-Winter Carnival.
“We just backed off him a little bit, he’s a bit of a lightly-framed horse, so we waited for this,” Pollard said.
“He could have run last week, but we decided to wait for this race and he’s probably a horse that we’ll give him this run and then a bit of a freshen up and he can come back after the carnival’s over.”
Brisbane’s leading jockey Ben Thompson will take the ride on Subterrain, who will start from barrier seven.
