Racing: Dickie eyes big paydays for Speeding Spur

No 3, Speeding Spur. Photo / Jason Dorday

Trainer John Dickie hopes doing the right thing will pay big autumn dividends with Speeding Spur.

Dickie is adamant the five-year-old stallion still could have won the A$100,000 Australian Trotting Grand Prix on Saturday, even with a slight leg bruise.

But Dickie chose to scratch him on the morning of the race, writing off the trip to Australia without a race.

"It wasn't a major deal and nothing to do with the suspensory problems that have kept him away from the track for much of last year," said Dickie.

"It was just some bruising caused by a trotting boot and we alerted the stewards over there to it and they passed him fit to run on Friday night.

"But when I wasn't happy with him on Saturday morning we pulled the pin because you don't muck around with horses that good.

"But his old injury has scanned fine three times, so most importantly there is no issue there."

Speeding Spur returns to Auckland today and Dickie will allow him to also bypass the NZ Trotting Champs at Addington to concentrate on the Anzac Cup and Rowe Cups at Alexandra Park in late April.

"He still has a lot of racing ahead of him, so we will target those."

The repeated interruptions to Speeding Spur's career have been made even harder to swallow since his arch rival Monbet has been sidelined since November and won't return until next season.

A fully-fit Speeding Spur would be dominating an open class trotting crop lacking true class and depth. Only Marcoola at his best looks a threat.

Meanwhile, after two months of serious group one racing on both sides of the Tasman, harness racing catches its breath this week.

The next huge meeting is not until Addington on March 31 when The Orange Agent is set to take on Dream About Me in the $100,000 Breeders Stakes.

The Cambridge meeting, which was originally scheduled for tomorrow night, will now he held on Friday in a straight swap with Addington, who wanted to move to avoid a clash with the Crusaders-Blues game on Friday night.