GROUP one-winning trainer Tim Donnelly hopes Cliff House can provide him with the biggest thrill of his career with victory in the $200,000 listed Wagga Gold Cup (2000m) on Friday.
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It's been 26 years since a local has taken out the Wagga Gold Cup and no one has gone closer to ending the drought than Donnelly.
The Wagga trainer was beaten a nose with Devised in consecutive cups back in 2012 and 2013 when only a photo finish denied the locals of a hometown victory in the race.
Donnelly returns on Friday with his best chance since, the bargain buy Cliff House, who is an $8.50 chance in the feature race and will be ridden by accomplished Wagga jockey Danny Beasley.
Before his move home to Wagga in the early 2000s, Donnelly reached the highs of Australian racing when he trained Quick Flick to group one success in the 1998 George Ryder Stakes.
But the astute horseman revealed a hometown cup victory would eclipse his group successes should Cliff House get the job done on Friday.
"If we happened to win this, this would be a bigger thrill than winning a group one. Absolutely," Donnelly said.
"You're a bit older at the end of your career. When you're younger, you think you might win another one. You think they'll keep coming along but they don't, when you're a small trainer it's very hard.
"With this, you've planned it better, you're a bit older and more sentimental I think."
Cliff House was purchased by Donnelly on the advice of his son, Alex, for $7000 online as an unraced proposition from the Greg Eurell stable in Melbourne.
Donnelly admits they were thinking Wagga maidens, not Wagga Gold Cups at the time.
"Alex pushed me into it. It was going to be sold unreserved, unnamed," Donnelly recalls.
"I was only ever going to $5000, so I bid $5000 and someone bid $6000 straight away and I thought no. Then I thought bugger it, I'll go to $7000 and that would have been my last bid.
"We weren't thinking Wagga cups, we were thinking Wagga maidens!"
Cliff House broke his maiden at his second race start. He didn't miss a placing in his first eight starts, amassing four wins in the process, including a Highway at Randwick.
He heads into Friday's Gold Cup with an imposing record of 14 starts for seven wins and four minor placings.
It wasn't until his four and a half length romp in the Gundagai Cup last start, held on the Wagga Riverside track, that Donnelly thought he's got a live chance.
"I think the Gundagai win because he's never put a field away like that and that's why I think he's learnt," Donnelly explained.
"His last two runs, if you go back and look at all his other wins, he just wins and doesn't run brilliant time the last 600. But he just wins.
"If you compare, go back and look at his Canberra win (last preparation) and compare it to his Gundagai win, the difference, he looked like he was going to win by five at Canberra but he didn't know how to put them away. Whereas in the Gundagai race, I thought it will be just like Canberra and he'll win by a length but he actually put them away.
"He showed that at Albury the previous start too when he had to come around Baledon and pick him up."
Adding to the excitement is a group of close family and friends in the ownership.
"These people, we've had history since we were in Kindergarten. Some other people, we've been friends since we've been born, plus our closest friends now are in it," Donnelly explained.
"I only said to (wife) Trisha this morning, it would be terrible if I owned this horse on my own. I've got these other people to enjoy it with, and even if it doesn't win, they're still going to have a good time."
Donnelly, an astute form student, gives Cliff House a big chance on Friday.
"The thing that I think gives him a better chance than what you would normally think he is, this is going to be his grand final," he said.
"I would think a lot of the horses in the race, is this grand final? There's four first-uppers in it. It's not their grand final.
"The horse that is going to be hardest to beat is Fawkner Park...he is a good horse and he might be improving (as well) but the trainer in me says he's been to Sydney, Melbourne, Albury, Sydney and then I hate it when you have a plan and things fall apart. So it missed that Sydney race and then it trialled.
"It might not be enough but for me, I know that I've had the perfect preparation, I'm not sure all the others have."
