Comeback trainer Glenn Dainton is excited to see if former South Australian star Shadow Mist can continue his impressive form since returning to Victoria in Friday afternoon’s Winter Cup final (660m) at Bendigo.
Dainton, who’s based at Cosgrove, knows a thing or two about middle distance success, having won the G1 Hume Cup (600m) at The Meadows in 2018 with Black Impala, while he ran second in the same race in 2013 with Bookkeeper.
He’s now hoping a step up to middle and possibly staying distances will spark a late career resurgence for Shadow Mist, which contested the G1 Hobart Thousand and Million Dollar Chase finals late in 2020 during a purple patch of form for SA trainer Lauren Harris.
“He started off in Victoria and then went over to Adelaide and seemed to thrive over there; it might have been the change of environment,” Dainton said.
“When Angle Park closed, Murray Bridge didn’t really suit him so he came back across and I was lucky enough to grab him after having a few years out of the dogs.
“I think after his last couple of runs at Murray Bridge people wrote him off.
“He’s a bit underrated. I don’t think people realise how good the dog is. Some of the times he ran at Angle Park – 29.29sec – not many dogs do that.
“I worked him up and started him off over 600m because his first section over 500m isn’t good enough in Victoria. Running 5.10sec or 5.11sec isn’t fast enough but even in 600s they’re really sprinting all the way and the plan is to see if he can run ‘700’.”
Shadow Mist, a son of Dyna Double One that has an outstanding 27 from 62 career strike rate, has improved in each of his three runs for Dainton, a second to dynamo Christo Bale followed by a smart 34.38sec success at The Meadows last Thursday.
Shadow Mist will step up to 660m for Friday’s $10,000 to-the-winner Winter Cup (Race 8 at 5.39pm), which will be his first race start at Bendigo since winning on debut there over 425m back in August 2019.
“It’ll be very interesting to see what he does,” Dainton said.
“He’s been to Bendigo a lot, so he’ll be fine there.
“There’s some decent dogs in the race. The ‘one’ (Bounce Back) and ‘three’ (Mepunga Ruby) look like the ones to beat and hopefully the ‘seven’ (Drumroll Please) doesn’t upset us early.
“He still has improvement to come with his fitness, He’s probably about three weeks from being at his peak but I’m pretty confident if he can clear them he’ll run it out.
“His second section is his best section, So I’m hoping he can clear them and then take off.”
