New Plymouth trainer Allan Sharrock produced Hakuna Matata to win the Prenters Ready Mix Concrete Woodville Pahiatua Cup in good conditions over 1600m yesterday.
In an even field, with five horses all starting under $10, Slah made the early running with Hakuna Matata sitting back handy in the trail aheadof Celebration and Goldschatz, the former Singapore-based galloper making its first start in 12 months.
Vanessa Johnston took Hakuna Matata up to challenge the leader at the turn and gradually gained ascendancy in the straight.
Spartinacus made a brief challenge wide and Lisa Latta's L'Amour also made a strong late bid to draw up alongside the leader in the shadows of the post.
But in the end Hakuna Matata stayed on to win the $20,000 open handicap by a neck to give the eight-year-old Chief Bearcat gelding its ninth raceday win, and take its earnings over $150,000.
Second was L'Amour with Minqar Qaim arriving late for third ahead of a game Slah.
The feature event of the Tauranga meeting, the Crockford Real Estate 1600m, was won in convincing fashion by second favourite Alegrio. Trained by Richard Collett, the six-year-old Captain Rio gelding with Alysha Collett on board handled the slow conditions better than his rivals to win the $20,000 event by 3 lengths from The Jungle Boy.
Better Together was just a head away third with favourite Shantaine a short neck back in fourth.
The other five legs were won by Peace Lilly (Leg1), Carrick (Leg2), Acapela (Leg3), Fastnfree (Leg5) and Werio in Leg 6.
The payout was $31,158.70 .
The West Coast meeting at Kumara, featuring the time honoured Kumara Gold Nuggets ($30,000) was abandoned due to the state of the track.
Stipendiary stewards Andrew Rae and Jeff McLaughlin inspected the track at Kumara at 6.30am yesterday morning and then met with club officials.
Light rain was falling at the time and the stewards' opinion was the track would be unsafe for racing given the Good 2 track conditions. The decision to abandon the meeting and postpone racing to Monday was made at 8am after Club officials had considered all of their options.
