Tamaashot slows before the line | Coffs Coast Horses | Horse Riding, Horseback in Coffs Coast

The Jim Jarvis trained Tamaashot won by a comfortable margin at Coffs Harbour yesterday.

Rob Wright

IT’S hard to find a horse race anywhere that is shorter than 800 metres but Coffs Harbour trainer Jim Jarvis may be on the lookout for one when he’s searching for a suitable race for his four-year-old gelding Tamaashot.

With only 100 metres to go in yesterday’s Coates Hire Maiden Plate over 800 metres, the Regal Shot progeny was leading by five lengths but he came back to the field in the final few moments.

“He stopped’” jockey John Keating yelled out to Jarvis as he returned to the winner’s circle.

But Jarvis admitted that he wasn’t surprised with the way that Tamaashot slowly finished.

“He ran at Moe three weeks ago and (Michael) Flaherty got off him and said there’s not a horse in New South Wales that will beat him over 800 metres,” Jarvis said.

“He said wet or dry this horse doesn’t care. He said he just flies but he said that getting him past 800 or 900 metres is a worry.”

So it’s now time to look at races that are only over that distance.

“There’s a few of them in Coffs Harbour and there’s also 900 metre races in Newcastle and on the Gold Coast,” he added.

“In those sort of races he can jump and as you saw there he was about 10 lengths in front coming to the corner.”

Jockey John Keating said that you could make excuses for the speed machine coming back to field over the last half furlong.

“He’s had a little bit of an easy time since we’ve had him up here and we’d only given him one or two little bits of pace work so we hadn’t done a lot with him so maybe the conditions and the fact that he was first up for nearly a month made him tire a bit,” Keating said.

Jarvis says that training now will revolve around keeping the obvious speed but seeing if Tamaashot can wait a while before unleashing a withering burst.

“If we can get him to settle a little bit we might pick up a race over 1000 but we’ve got to get him settled down a little bit.”