WELL BRED four-year-old gelding Innasbrook emerged as one of the favourites to take out the Eric Reece Memorial final after scoring an impressive first-up win in a heat over 2090 metres at Tattersall’s Park in Hobart on Sunday night. The Kerry Edwards-trained gelding had not started since late August but his fitness level was high enough to maintain a decent margin over the concluding stages. Innasbrook won four three-year-old races from 16 starts last season and the entire gave an indication that he could develop into a potential top liner. He resumed from his three month layoff looking a million dollars. He paraded like a horse that had not been spelled and he raced accordingly. Edwards earmarked the Reece series a while back and he also has plans to tackle the Holgate series which is run on a similar basis to the Reece. James Austin drove Innasbrook to victory but the talented young reinsman also partnered the Tony Petersen-trained Dressed In Black to win the remaining Reece heat. Dressed In Black is only lightly raced having had one start last season in a three-year-old in which he finished fourth and was subsequently turned out for a decent spell. He resumed with an unplaced effort in a C0 in Hobart but finished less than six metres from the winner. But from a favourable inside front-row draw Dressed In Black was able to hold the lead from the pole and despite being challenged seriously many times during the race he had enough in reserve to score by a half-metre from Ark Raid with Margableon over four metres away third. The final of the Eric Reece will be held in Hobart on Boxing Day night as part of the Group 1 Tasmania Cup meeting Listen to what trainer Kerry Edwards had to say about Innasbook’s first-up effort – click here.