TRAINER-BREEDER Ray Worbey rarely gets emotional after a win but he struggled to hold back the tears after his well-bred mare Tough Missile scored an impressive win on debut at UBET Park Hobart today.
Tough Missile (Tough Sped-Strathmore Luck) went into her first race having performed well in recent trials but surprisingly she started as an outsider and paid $24.70 on the tote.
The mare started from the outside barrier but made light of the task to easily cross the field and lead.
With talented rider Bulent Muhcu aboard Tough Missile maintained a steady rhythm and when the rider called on her to extend turning for home she quickly put the end result beyond doubt.
Tough Missile scored by over two lengths from Turtles Nest with Chill Winston a closing third.
“This is the mare’s first preparation so she’s done a great job to get to where she is in such a short time,” Worbey said.
“She is from a mare that we bred that was the first horse I trained so that makes it special but what is really special is that this mare (Tough Missile) was left to be by my late Dad (Col Worbey) and I guess he would have been looking down from above to help out today,” he said.
Tough Missile ran the 1100 metres in 1.06.86 which wasn’t far off the class record but clearly good enough to earn her a debut win.
“She ran the second fastest time of the day in a trial so I thought if she brought that to the races today she’d be hard to beat and that’s exactly what she did.”
“I believe she has a bright future so we’ll just keep plodding along through the classes,” he said.