Racing: Hotshots finally produce high-quality performances

Jays Debut on the way to winning series final. Picture / Martin Sykes

Finally.

After a season in which mediocrity has painfully ruled harness racing and the great horses have spent more time in the vet clinic than the winners circle, there were moments of true awe at Alexandra Park on Saturday.

Because the performances Delft and Jays Debut produced were those of genuinely good horses, horses who can now go to Australia and fly the New Zealand flag with pride.

Horses who can do what so few of our best standardbreds have done this season - win against the odds.

Not win because they had the right luck but win because they were just too good.

Delft started the ball rolling in national record style in the $50,000 National Trot and Jays Debut matched him for the performance of the day in the $150,000 Sales Series Pace.

Both were impressive, ominous and killers for the bookies. And both needed their wins to resurrect their reputations after horror campaigns.

In a season when only Mainland Banner in the New Zealand Cup, Pompallier in the Dominion Handicap and Western Dream among the fillies have truly been able to dominate the best races, Delft added his name to that list with his all-the-way victory.

The giant trotter trotted almost faultlessly, which for him is half the battle, to thrash a gallant Pompallier by five lengths, erasing Fraggle Rock's national 2700m mobile record set in the 1991 Interdominion Final from the books by nearly a second.

It was the type of performance Delft has threatened to produce for the past year - and catapulted him to second in the markets for Interdominions which start at Ballarat in Victoria on January 28.

After the race, in which Delft was backed in from a fixed odds quote of $12 to $6, trainer Michelle Wallis was adamant she had never lost faith in Delft even though he had not won a race since March.

She now faces the task of getting Delft to the Interdom final on February 11 in the same form as he was on Saturday.

That is not an easy task with a horse whose body has often hijacked his right to greatness.

Jays Debut was just as impressive for different reasons in our richest three-year-old race.

He had to work hard wide early before taking the lead into the headwind with a lap to go.

To overcome that and pace a 1:58.9 mile rate even though he has not physically turned three yet - because he is bred to Northern Hemisphere time - was the effort of a superstar in waiting.

Like Delft he heads to Melbourne this month, his target being the Victoria Derby, for which he will have a new trainer as Mark Purdon returns from his four-month suspension to take over the team which has been in the care of Grant Payne.

It was only just Payne should get the lucrative trainer's percentage from Saturday's victory as he has done a superb job filling in for Purdon at such a stressful time.