Sale trainer Reg Manning added yet another Hinnomunjie Cup to the mantelpiece when Bonza Boots took the 2100-metre feature last Saturday.
Manning saddled up five of the eight runners in the 2100-metre feature but Bonza Boots ($10) was only the third pick of his team in the market, which was led by Don Dwyer-trained All Too Creedy ($2).
Bonza Boots was coming off a fourth at Yea on February 25 over an unsuitably short 1600 metres, having won a 2350-metre Healesville maiden two starts earlier, on the Australia Day weekend.
Perhaps punters feared Bonza Boots’s jockey might have been a bit rusty.
 The Hinnomunjie meeting saw Rowan Cox race-riding for the first time since July 5, 2014, at Barcaldine (Qld). (He was a winner that day too.)
Cox’s only warm-up ride was on Frosted Dash in the previous at Hinnomunjie for Cooma trainer Georgie Boucher. The gelding finished last of five, beaten almost 12 lengths.
Cox quickly bounced back to get the cash in the cup, however, Bonza Boots perhaps relishing the firm 2 track to score by three-quarters of a length from the Troy Kilgower-trained Continuation.
Manning’s defending Hinnomunie Cup champ Cheeky Prince was third, All Too Creedy fourth and the remainder of Manning’s team fifth, sixth and eighth.
This was Reg Manning’s 29th Hinnomunjie Cup in total as jockey, owner and/or trainer. As a trainer he won in 2011 with Cool Prince, then with Guadalcanal in 2013, 2014 and 2016. After he won with Jaws Of Life in 2019 the race was renamed the Alec Manning Memorial Hinnomunjie Cup in honour of Reg’s late father.
“I’ve got all my cup winners with me in the paddock, the ones that haven’t died off, and those ones are buried in the paddock,” Reg told Winning Post this week.
Overall the honours were shared at Hinnomunjie, with six stables and six jockeys successful on the six-race card.
Riding premiership leader Shaun Cooper wasn’t there, but Dylan Dean (second), Grant Seccombe (third), Jack Virgona (fifth), Sophie Clayfield (equal sixth) and Ben Moffat (10th) rode winners.
The leading stables of Kilgower and Dwyer traded blows with a winner apiece while Rob Gillahan — based at nearby Ensay and, like Manning, synonymous with the Hinnomunjie and Swifts Creek races — won the last with Wanambal ($7).
Boucher’s trip across the NSW border from Cooma was rewarded with the win of $1.80 favourite Pharose in the 1200-metre maiden while Jenni Of Avalon ($3.80) scored over 1600 metres to make it three wins from her past four starts for Sale’s Paul Worthington — not bad given she was a 23-start maiden at the professionals for five different trainers.
Cooper kicks away
Shaun Cooper might have taken last Saturday off but he was back with a vengeance at Balnarring on Sunday, riding three of the seven winners to extend his premiership lead to seven over Dylan Dean, who scored a double of his own.
All three of Cooper’s winners started favourite, as did two of the other four winners on a dark day for the satchel-swingers.
Cooper kicked off with Whoopti Fizz ($1.80), who scored over 2000 metres for loacl trainer Cheryl Weller.
It was the mare’s third win of the picnic season but her first at home.
Two races later Cooper won the 1008-metre maiden on Savabeel filly Domain Gardens ($1.40), who was having her first run for Mornington’s Clayton Douglas after six runs for one placing in the Sydney table of John Sargent.
In the following event, over the same trip, Cooper scored on Beldivian ($2) to edge trainer Don Dwyer back into the premiership lead.
Dean’s double, meanwhile, came on Cranbourne-trained horses — Portobello Road ($6) in the 2000-metre open trophy for Tony Rosolini and Cent To War ($2.40 favourite) over 1600 metres for Yvonne Harvey.
On a day when female trainers won four of the seven races, the daughter-mother trainer-jockey team of Rebecca and Debbie Waymouth scored a popular win with Miss Moocha in the 1600-metre maiden.
It was Miss Moocha’s third start for Bec Waymouth, and it was no surprise to see her improve at the distance, as she’d placed at Benalla, Mornington, Cranbourne and Echuca over 1500 metres and further for Matt Laurie early in her career.
The bookies breathed a sigh of relief after the last, with the roughest winner of the day getting up in a photo over yet another favourite.
Achaeus, who was bred in Germany and raced in the UK before arriving as a jumps prospect with Matthew Williams at Warrnambool, scored by the narrowest of margins for Sale trainer Susie Wells in the Happy 105th Birthday Harry Dickson Open Trophy Race (1600m).
Achaeus, racing for the first time since a last of 10 at Pakenham 59 days earlier, started the rank outsider in the seven-horse field at $12 despite having run a respectable second over the same course at his only previous picnic outing.