A hit of tennis is a welcome distraction from training a team of horses for Morphettville horseman Peter Blanch.
Tuesday night is a regular, while he will often find himself on court on a Saturday when he doesn’t have a city runner to saddle up.
“I’m competitive, but I wouldn’t say I’m any good,” Blanch said.
“I play on Saturday if I don’t have to go to the races. It’s good social outing.”
Blanch heads to Gawler today with promising galloper Puissance Dusoleil, who needs to return serve and regain form when she drops back in class.
After showing plenty of potential during her three-year-old campaign when she contested some of the better fillies’ races, Puissance Dusoleil hasn’t fired in two runs back from a spell, despite looking good in an Oakbank trial back in early January.
“After a couple of conditioning runs hopefully she’s ready to get back to form,” Blanch said,
“Otherwise, we don’t really know where we going.”
The Gawler race was the ideal opportunity for the lightly-raced mare, who has shown plenty in a short career. However, Blanch said there was a need for the daughter of Puissance De Lune to recapture winning form.
“We need to get her back (winning),” Blanch said.
“We thought we’d go back in grade – she’s been a bit lost since she won in town almost 12 months ago.
“As a three-year-old she had a couple of torrid runs in those better races.
“In the first she got the back of the favourite and it took her nowhere. In the second she almost hit the deck when the speed slackened and after that she didn’t (spell during) winter too well.”
Puissance Dusoleil tracked into her latest start strongly at Murray Bridge before failing to finish off, beaten three lengths behind Echo Boomer, and Blanch said it may have been a case of getting her to a mile one run too soon.
“She probably over raced a little bit which may have taken a bit off her finish,” he said.
“And maybe second-up, straight to the mile wasn’t ideal after a light 12 months.
“She’s had two runs into this and we’ll be looking for a forward showing otherwise we’re going back to the drawing board.”
Puissance Dusoleil has been burdened by her inability to maintain weight during her racing campaigns, but Blanch said her latest campaign has been her most successful in sustaining it.
“For her, she’s in good shape,” he said.
“She’s never going to be a robust mare, but she’s 25kg heavier than when she was when we tipped her out. But she needs to hold on to it.”
Blanch and Puissance Dusoleil have found a midweek race featuring some talented and reasonably well horses, making today’s challenge a little tougher.
“It’s not the easiest midweek you would go to,” he said.
“But we had quite high aspirations for her at one stage, so if she’s going to go on, we need her to start showing it.”