Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX
Looking at the oddly-named mare Frankensteinsbride one can see the scars and multiple stitch marks on the near side of her body as well as the scar across her forehead.
These are constant reminders of her misfortunes in the first year of her life when she suffered a severe cut on her forehead at the age of six months, and then a month later she ran into a tree and ripped a gaping hole in her side, a bloody injury which required more than 200 stitches,
“And those ugly injuries is the reason why I named her after the fictitious monster Frankenstein,” explained the mare’s breeder Clinton Pearce, who races her in partnership with his wife Danielle, his brother Travis and some of his best mates, Terry Churstain, David Holt and Michael King.
Frankensteinsbride went into the $21,000 Garrard’s Horse And Hound @ Menangle Autumn Series Maiden final over 2130m at Gloucester Park on Friday night with a record of no wins, six seconds and six thirds from 36 starts when she was a $18.30 chance from the No. 4 barrier.
The Big Kaboosh was the $1.50 favourite from barrier two, and she was the smartest into stride, leaving Frankensteinsbride in the breeze. But this did not prevent Frankensteinsbride from finishing doggedly to take the lead in the final 50m and win from the $3.70 second favourite Don Diablo, who ran home gamely after trailing the leader. The Big Kaboosh wilted to finish third.
Frankensteinsbride overraced badly but it did not prevent her from winning convincingly, with reinsman Kyle Harper saying: “I thought we might have been in a bit of trouble when she was overracing. But she ran a bold race and won comfortably. I didn’t need to pull the plugs.”
This was a notable victory for the 41-year-old hobby trainer and full-time finance broker Clinton Pearce, whose only previous metropolitan-class winner was Demon Possessed, the $53.60 rank outsider who set the pace and dead-heated for first with This Time Dylan in a 2503m standing-start event at Gloucester Park on September 20, 2013.
Pearce, who has held a trainer’s licence for 15 years, has prepared 19 winners from 398 starts.
Frankensteinsbride is by former brilliant pacer Alta Christiano and is the first foal out of Bettors Delight mare Ctheballerina, who raced 96 times for two wins in New Zealand, four in Victoria and one in Tasmania. She was also placed 24 times and earned $61,790.
Ctheballerina ended her career in Western Australia where she had 46 starts for eight placings in 2018 and 2019. She raced in Victoria for Andy and Kate Gath before arriving in WA to be prepared by Mike Reed.
“We eventually got her, and she ran a couple of placings at Kellerberrin for us,” said Pearce.
Frankensteinsbride was making her seventh appearance at Gloucester Park on Friday night when Pearce said he was “full of confidence that she would go close.”
The win was some compensation for Pearce, who lost six-year-old mare Bramante Steps to a bout of colic just over a week ago.