4 Dec 2021John Bell is a glass half-full trainer and he needed to be with the trials and tribulations he faced this week with Matamata winner Hot Salsa.
The Cambridge-based horseman had taken the Cambridge Stud-bred and sold son of Tavistock to New Plymouth on Thursday, only for the meeting to be abandoned.
Fortunately, Bell also accepted with Hot Salsa at Matamata today and following a nervy preliminary, during which the gelding dislodged rider Trudy Thornton, he got the job done.
“He bucked on his way to the start and Trudy was off so that’s how fresh he was so the trip to New Plymouth obviously did him no harm,” Bell said.
Hot Salsa jumped well to race behind the pace this afternoon before angling off the rail before the turn and finished determinedly to open his winning account over 1400 metres in his fifth race day appearance.
A $10,000 graduate from our 2019 Karaka yearling draft, Hot Salsa is a half-brother to five winners including Diamond King who was successful at Listed level in South Africa. Their dam Salsa won the Listed VRC Winter Championship and was runner-up in the G1 New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes.