QUALITY mare Queen Of Fire gave astute young horseman Zeke Slater his biggest win since taking out his trainer’s licence just under two years ago when she powered home to win the $30,000 Devonport Cup over 3020 metres.
Despite making a mess of the standing start and giving away her advantage of a front row draw, the four-year-old unleashed a powerful sprint from the 500-metre mark to haul in the leaders and go on and score comfortably from Spot Nine and Notaswethought.
Slater set his sights on the Devonport Cup after the mare scored an impressive win in Hobart last Sunday night in the Joesashyguy Pace over 1609 metres, coming from near last 600m out to score full of running over quality opposition.
“She’s a pretty good mare with a lot of ability and she deserves this because she’s had a lot of thing go wrong this past three or four weeks,” Slater said.
The trainer thought if she drew the front and led she’d be very hard to run down but things didn’t go to plan, yet she still emerged triumphant.
Queen Of Fire (Courage Under Fire-Penultimate) is owned in Victoria by Merv Butterworth who has had a long involvement with racing horses in Tasmania but Slater races the mare on lease.