Will Clarken and Niki O’Shea have no short of twelve nominations for the final meeting of the 2023-24 racing season at Morphettville on Saturday in their quest to secure a maiden South Australian Metropolitan Trainers Premiership.
Clarken and O’Shea have enjoyed a brilliant 12 months and are currently tied with the Richard and Chantelle Jolly stable on 43 city wins - 30 more than last season - with a strike-rate of 18.6 per cent of runners to winners.
“It’s been a little bit of a patchy season,’’ Clarken said.
“We started off really well and then we cleaned out a lot of horses over Christmas, Niki went overseas and it was daunting there for a while.
“But Niki and I have learnt a lot from each other this year.
“We obviously have the three stables working well together. We’ve got eight horses in work at Morphettville, 25 here at the farm (Sellicks Hill) and then 30 at Murray Bridge.
“We’ve got a lot of good people around us like Lachie (Weekley, Racing Manager) and John Kelton which is crucial to things running smoothly,’’ he said.
The stable has three nominations in Saturday’s $120,000 Listed Lightning Stakes (1050m), a race that has been good to Clarken in recent years.
He won the 2021 feature with Beau Rossa before Extremely Lucky announced himself as an exciting prospect with an emphatic victory a year later, their three nominations all to carry the colours of Ridgeport Thoroughbreds.
“We’ll probably have two line up in the Lightning,’’ Clarken said.
“Ridgeport is obviously a great supporter of out stable and we’ll also have Boognish who is nicely weighted in a restricted race.
“We’ve got some nice horses going to the races and what will be, will be’’ he said.
