Natalie Rasmussen has no doubt done a great job with her pacer Blacks A Fake which has now won four Inter Dominion Grand Finals, but without the proper grounding in the sport she wouldn't be where she is today. Her parents Vic and Cheryl (pictured) let their daughters Natalie and Kylie help out around the stables as children - and today both women forge successful career's in the industry. Cheryl Rasmussen also part owns the champion pacer.

If the late race caller Bill Collins was in our midst today he’d probably declare that the champion pacer Blacks A Fake – and not either of Bonecrusher or Our Waverley Star – had raced “into equine immortality.” Collins got a bit carried away one year in a Cox Plate when Our Waverley Star and Bonecrusher joined issue a long way out and had a tooth and nail struggle to the line. Most Queenslanders, but not all, were cheering for the late Russ Hinze owned Our Waverley Star, but Russ Hinze, the State Government “minister for everything”, which just happened to include the racing portfolio – had to be content with running second to the talented New Zealander Bonecrusher.

So if Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star in fact raced themselves into “equine immortality” that day back in October of 1986 at Moonee Valley, in the Cox Plate, God knows what Blacks A Fake did at Menangle yesterday afternoon when at 5pm local time he demolished a field of the best nine rivals that could be assembled from all over Australasia, by creating history and winning his fourth Inter Dominion Grand Final.

Via his making his fifth Inter Dominion Grand Final field he’d equalled harness racing history, as only one horse, Caduceus had achieved that feat and that was half a century ago, but whereas Caduceus went to his maker with a CV showing he was good enough to only win one Inter Dominion (1960), whilst being placed in another (1956) – Blacks A Fake’s five attempts have resulted in an incredible four wins and one second – and as I wrote here last week “he should have won last year”, so he’s stiff not to have won five from five. Last year’s conqueror of Blacks A Fake at Parklands, Mr Feelgood couldn’t get hot in yesterday’s Grand Final, clocking in second last, beaten over 15 metres, again vindicating just how unlucky Blacks A Fake was last year.

Blackie’s Inter Dominion Grand Final winning sequence started at Hobart in 2006, moved to Globe Derby in 2007, then continued at Moonee Valley in 2008, prior to last year’s unlucky second at Parklands on Queensland’s Gold Coast and yesterday’s dominant win at Menangle.

In the race prior to the 2010 Inter Dominion Grand Final yesterday (Race 7), Blacks A Fake’s trainer/driver Natalie Rasmussen had to settle for second when her pacer Western Cam was nailed in the last couple of strides by the Lance Justice driven pacer Our Malabar in the $60,000 consolation of the Inter Dominion. In the race prior to the Inter Dominion consolation (Race 6), Natalie Rasmussen had steered roughie Maywyn Jasper to victory for Gatton based trainer Shane Sanderson in the $100,000 Australian Pacing Gold Final for colts and geldings. The pacer finalised at $23.20 for a win on Unitab, but $35 fixed odds for a win had been on offer just prior to the mobile despatching the field.

Could Natalie Rasmussen bounce back 38 minutes after her narrow defeat steering Western Cam and get that pacer’s stablemate Blacks A Fake home in the million dollar race?

She sure could, as she took her pacer back at the start to settle sixth, three back in the running line, when pole marker Washakie’s trainer/driver John McCarthy decided to hold the lead as expected, but that pacer was pressured early, from out wide on the track by the Lance Justice driven Smoken Up, which had started from the extreme outside of the front - in barrier 10.

When the field was sent on its journey in the Inter Dominion Grand Final, the short priced $2.20 favourite Monkey King’s driver Rickey May immediately snagged his drive to get on the back of the $3.70 second favourite Blacks A Fake. May would surely have been giggling to himself when Natalie Rasmussen moved her pacer Blacks A Fake out three wide at about the 1000-metre mark when at that point the race looked to be as good as over, as it wasn’t rocket science to work out that Monkey King would simply tail Blacks A Fake into the straight – and given the easy run he’d had in transit, verses the work Blacks A Fake had done in the run, he’d run straight past the three times winner. But Natalie Rasmussen and Blacks A Fake, who to that point had won 60 of Blackie’s 81 starts, weren’t going to hoist the white flag of surrender without a dogfight and they combined for not only one of their greatest career victories, but in doing so, they surely broke Monkey King’s heart, for try as he may, he just couldn’t overpower the rising 10-year-old Queenslander.

So from my personal perspective, the Menangle win of Blacks A Fake deserves to go into “equine immortality” – not that race that features Bonecrusher and Our Waverley Star fighting out one finish of one Cox Plate. Maybe if they’d fought out four or five Cox Plates they could be reasonably deemed to be worthy recipients of some sort of “equine immortality”.

One feature of yesterday’s Inter Dominion at Menangle was the phenomenal hold on the race on the TAB’s around the country.

When the mobile rolled to despatch the field, the TAB win pool alone on the race were Super TAB ($336,000), New South Wales $325,000 and Unitab $138,000 meaning that $799,000 had been invested on the race - in just the win pool only - and that figure wasn’t final, as betting didn’t cease until the green light on the mobile was activated to signify a start, so the combined win pool of the three major TAB’s would have finished up well over $800,000, which is a wonderful result for harness racing.

On Unitab alone, which had by far the smallest hold on the race of the big three TAB’s, the race hold was an amazing $420,209 and when you look at the exotics that also incorporated the Inter Dominion Grand Final as a leg, such as the Daily Double, Quadrella and Treble - the figure reached a staggering $554,706.

The hold on the race on Unitab was made up of:

Added on to the aforesaid $420,209 figure to get the hold to reach $554,706 were the Quadrella hold of $109,168, as the Inter Dominion was the third leg of the Quadrella. Included also were the Daily Double hold was $5,469 - and the Treble hold of $19,860.

Reverting back to the individual hold on this race being $420,209, to give readers an idea of where that hold sits in the general score of things, the previous day they raced at Warwick Farm in Sydney and the total Unitab hold on Race 1 (won by Strike One) was $87,939 – on Race 2 (Dorf Command) it was $310,471, whilst on Race 4 (Solar Charged) it was $317,178. The Inter Dominion pool of $420,209 was also a healthy 51.84% of the main race run in Sydney the day before, namely the Group 1 Chipping Norton Stakes, which was won by Theseo, as that race hold was $810,441.

Whilst it is acknowledged that even Dolly Parton had her knockers – and many knockers of the code of harness racing say “No one is interested in betting on harness racing”, yesterday proved in no uncertain terms that they are- if we assemble the good horses – and the race gets promoted properly in the media. To that end I rated it as “disgraceful” that the race wasn’t even mentioned on Sky Channel’s Racing Retro show on Sunday morning, yet at the end of the show they managed to get in free plugs for black type thoroughbred races that are happening this week with total prizemoney as little as $75,000 – and that $75,000 just happens to be about 13 times less than the million dollars that the Inter Dominion was worth. During Racing Retro they even crossed live to Matt Browning to preview that crappy thoroughbred 2YO race that is run in Canberra each year – the Listed Black Opal. It’s worth $250,000 which is just 25% of what the Group 1 Inter Dominion was worth the same day. They obviously think that thoroughbreds are the only code in the “Racing” part of the name Racing Retro.

Queensland – and indeed Australia – salutes Natalie Rasmussen and Blacks A Fake for their wonderful achievement of winning four Inter Dominion Grand Finals and running second in another, for if watching them in action, out on the racetrack of dreams, doesn’t get a person’s adrenalin racing through their veins, that person should really look at collecting stamps, or some allied activity.

Whilst Natalie Rasmussen and Blacks A Fake were rightly entitled to be the star attractions at the meeting, there were many other Queenslanders who did themselves and their State industry proud on the day, as apart from Gatton’s Shane Sanderson winning the colts and geldings Australian Pacing Gold with Maywyn Jasper, as was alluded to earlier, fellow Queenslander Luke McCarthy driving For A Reason clocked in second in that race, meaning Queenslanders ran the quinella in the prestigious event. Trainer Stuart Hunter and Victorian reinsman Gavin Lang also combined to win on the program with $2.70 favourite Stunin Girl in the $100,000 Australian Pacing Gold fillies final. Then in the last race the Queensland combination of trainer Phil Mitchell and driver Chris Petroff were victorious in the $25,000 Garrards Horse and Hound Championship at an official starting price of $12.90, so all in all, the day was simply a great success story for the sport of harness racing - a point which, going forward, the new Board overseeing the three codes of racing in this State need to acknowledge. Imagine how successful the sport could actually be if prizemoney levels were lifted to attract some new participants? Maybe, just maybe, the sport could return to somewhere near where it was, a few decades ago - in its halcyon days that I remember oh so well and have such fond memories of.