She has a resume bulging with feature race placings, and outstanding performances in top company, now Second Exit has a trophy of her own after a brilliant victory in the Sportsbet Middle Distance Championship Final at Dapto on Thursday night.
Spearing out of box 1, the Peter Sims-trained bitch led throughout to claim the $25,000 first prize, and in doing so came within a length of the track record.
Second Exit clocked 34.16s, just 0.7s outside the 34.09s record set in September 2015 by Fantastic Tail.
For connections it is an overdue big race success.
In recent months Second Exit has finished second to Ritza Coen in the NSW Sprint Championships Final, was second to Shadow Mist in the TAB Million Dollar Chase semi-final, and then finished on the heels of the placegetters in the MDC Consolation the following week.
“She was overdue a good race,” Sims said. “She went very well tonight. I was happy with the run, she did everything right.
“You can land in these races and you think you know what’s going to happen, and it can all backfire on you, but things went her way tonight and she’s come away with a nice win.
“She’s a handy bitch, she just turns up all the time, and wins like this all go towards her stud career when she eventually has some pups.”
While the performance was outstanding, Sims is not in any to rush to see if Second Exit will be able to step up again to 700m events.
“She’s still capable of dropping back to the 500s. You freshen her up and she’ll drop back, but if you take her to the next step, who knows she mightn’t come back (to the sprint distances). There have been a few nice dogs who go (from 500m) to 600m and then you step them to 700m, and they don’t relish coming back.
“With her we can go from 600m and she can come back to 500m.”
Mark Gatt’s promising young dog Stanley Road produced a great performance to charge home and grab second, 2¼ lengths back, with Prim And Proper holding on for third.
