Callaghan keeps the team on track

THE powerful Craig Cross stable is set for a busy time over the next few months as they prepare to contest feature harness races right along Australia’s eastern seaboard.

This Saturday night the team is at Albion Park in Queensland where they have four horses contesting the $175,000 TAB Blacks A Fake Championship, headed up by their stable star King Of Swing, who is taking top form into the race having won at his past two starts at Tabcorp Park Menangle.

The winner of $1.5 million in stakes and this year’s Miracle Mile has drawn well in barrier five for the 2680-metre trip and has the services of New South Wales’ leading reinsman Luke McCarthy, who has driven an astonishing 224 winners in the current term.

Not only does Cross have to meticulously map out the racing program for his many well-performed horses, but also needs to organise his staff to travel the horses both to local race meetings as well as interstate.

Tonight, he will send talented young reinsman Jack Callaghan to Penrith with just two runners, which is a quiet night for Sydney’s busiest stable.

Callaghan is currently working for Cross, relocating to Cobbitty after establishing himself as a reinsman with a big future in his hometown of Newcastle, where his father Mark has been a leading horseman for decades.

Their first runner tonight is the royally-bred three-year-old filly Ice Pick Angie, who is the winner of three of her 24 career starts.

She is a daughter of Bettors Delight and her dam Deadly Woman is a full sister to champion pacer For A Reason as well as eight other winners.

Ice Pick Angie has been racing consistently since she won at Newcastle on October 23.

Two starts back she ran second, beaten a head in a heat of the Breeders Challenge Regional Series and was then placed third in the Final three weeks ago.

Against a strong field tonight, the filly must overcome an awkward second-row draw.

The second Cross runner is Miss Gold Fortune (Race 2), a former Riverina pacer that recently joined the stable.

In her debut for Cross, the mare ran fourth, beaten just under six metres, against strong opposition and will no doubt benefit from the outing, her first in eight months.

• MICHAEL DUMESNY