Gelding ready to fire after ‘severe knock’
Ray Hickson
For a few days Kym Davison thought it was over.
The Albury trainer has been excited all year about his prospects in the Autumn Break Evergreen Turf Country Championship series but a freak eye injury at the start of the Wagga qualifying race nearly ended his bid.
This led to Davison sending the three-year-old to the paddock, expecting him to be out of action for a month.
Autumn Break still finished third at Wagga despite the head knock, making him the Southern Districts Racing Association’s emergency for the final but Davison is looking for a place of his own by winning the $150,000 Country Championship Southern Wild Card (1400m) at Goulburn on Sunday.
“He was a little bit sick for three or four days and feeling sorry for himself,” Davison said.
“I guess he probably had a hairline fracture in his eye socket, he didn’t let you approach his head from the near side for three or four days.
“He had a severe blow to the head and had discharge coming out of his nostril for about four days. We put him in the paddock and he started wandering around, everything was fine so we took him back in. Everything is as good as gold for him now.”
In the circumstances, after that incident and racing throughout, Davidson was immensely proud of Autumn Break’s performance at Wagga.
This followed an unlucky third place behind Hunter & North West runner-up Fingers Hunter at the TAB Speedway at Randwick in early February.
Nick Heywood will race at Goulburn and Davison wants things to go well for him for a change.
“He worked very well on Saturday so it’s got to be all systems go, he’s put in a barrier at the end which will help and we’ll see how we go from there,” he said.
“His talent almost gets him there. Hopefully he can manage to stay a little bit off the pace in the first six or seven and have clear success against them and show what he can do.”
“He healed much faster than I expected and is back to where he needs to be.
“Actually, he still has to be undefeated, as a bonus you enter at 56 kilos, but now he has to meet our expectations.”
The winner will receive a spot in the $1 million Evergreen Turf Country Championship Final.
Provided by Racing NSW
Full form and race replays are available at: racensw.com.au
