FOR the fifth time in her career, The Lagoon’s Amanda Turnbull has notched up five winning drives in a meeting when dominating the Parkes Harness Racing Club’s Wednesday night program.
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Though she did not win the feature Elvis Championship Final as she had done 12 months earlier – the honours this year going to Monique Parsons (Its A Shakedown, $19.60) – the evening still belonged to Turnbull.
She took out the first four races of the meeting, steering members of her own team Moon Ovr Manhattan ($1.40 favourite), What A Curtainraiser ($1.60 favourite) and Crafty Cullen ($1.20 favourite) to victory as well as Conviction ($1.20 favourite), who is trained by her father Steve Turnbull.
Amanda Turnbull then made it five wins in a single meeting at Parkes for the third time in her career when guiding the Darryl Fliedner, Cowra trained Molly Dolly Diva ($13.70) to an upset victory.
“It’s a pretty good feeling to do that,” Turnbull said.
“I knew I was in for a pretty good night because I had a couple of good ones in with a couple of good draws, but I never thought I’d get that many.
“It was good to get on a bit of a roll too.”
While Turnbull, who sits on top of the Harness Racing NSW drivers’ premiership, was unable to nominate one run as more impressive that the others on Wednesday, she is excited to see what is to come from Conviction.
His win came in a Club Menangle Country Series Heat (1,660 metres), which qualifies him for the final at Menangle.
“The ones I trained I was really pleased to win with, it rewards that hard work you put in, Conviction was a good one too, he’s a good horse, it’s good to see him back and doing well,” she said.
“He was a bit wayward, he didn’t love it, but he ran a good time and got up.
“He’ll race in the final at Menangle and if he goes good in that, we’ll probably look at some of the four-year-old feature races with him.”
A four-year-old by For A Reason out of Safely Grattan, Conviction was second up at Parkes on Wednesday after saluting at Bathurst’s Carnival of Cups meeting on December 26 in a 1:53.3 mile rate.
As Turnbull indicated, Conviction did not do it all easy on the smaller Parkes track after going from barrier two. Still, he showed good gate speed before settling one out and one back.
Turnbull began her move after a 28.3 seconds third sectional, moving up to eye-ball stablemate Belligerence ($13.20) through the bend.
Conviction took the lead down the straight and while Belligerence kicked again, the favourite held on to win by a head in a 1:56.8 mile rate. Hez All Courage ($8.40) placed third.
As for Turnbull’s own team, she has not targeted any specific races.
She just hopes to build on the 58 winners she had for the season as of the end of the Parkes meeting.
“It’s going pretty good so far this season,” Turnbull said. “Mrs Browns Boy is nearly back ready to race. I’m not really targeting anything, I’ll just see who it goes.”