FINDING suitable races for talented eight-year-old pacer Saab Quality is no easy task for his trainer Marc Butler but he found an ideal event for the gelding at The TOTE Racing Centre in Launceston tonight.
Saab Quality was backed in to start the $2.60 favourite in the Chartley Estate Claimer over 2200 metres and he never let his supporters down by powering home to score an effortless win.
With Mark Yole in the cart, Saab Quality stepped well from the inside if the second row but the driver snagged him back and eventually eased into the one-out line before sending him around the field to face the breeze Livin It Lovin It just over a lap from home.
That pair settled down to a two-horse war from the home turn but when Yole called on Saab Quality for the supreme effort he forged clear and went on to score comfortably from the fast-finishing Family Guy with Livin It Lovin It third.
“I’ve been struggling to find suitable races for him and that’s why he hasn’t raced for about a month,” Butler said.
“He is racing as well as ever and he is very suited to these claimers but sometimes they (races) don’t stand up.”
“But there is another mobile claimer here in Launceston in a fortnight so that’s where he’ll race next,” Butler said.
This was Saab Quality’s sixth win for the season but he also has notched four minor placings from 12 starts.
Saab Quality is well travelled having spent seven months racing in Victoria during the 2013-14 season that produced five wins and multiple minor placings.
He was claimed by Jamie Cockshutt and Barry Cooper in a claimer at Maryborough at the end of that Victorian campaign after which he returned to Tasmania and has been very consistent in Butler’s care.