Emotions will overflow if star pacer Fighter Command can successfully defend his crown in Saturday night’s $80,000 Beautide in Hobart.
There are so many layers of heartbreak and tragedy behind the Tasmanian-owned and bred gelding.
It was a year ago when Fighter Command, then just a three-year-old with a bundle of raw talent, brilliantly won the Beautide and the resultant golden ticket into the world’s richest harness race, the $2.1mil TAB Eureka.
Connections were buzzing with excitement and anticipation at the prospect of giving the TAB Eureka a huge shake.
But it all came crashing down just a few weeks later, just days out from the race, when Fighter Command was struck down with a twisted bowel, rushed to the vet clinic, and almost died.
The TAB Eureka dreams were over and, for a while, trainer Jess Tubbs’s pacer’s life might be, too.
“We didn’t know if he’d pull through; it was touch and go for days,” she said.
“It’s been a long road back. You’re not sure if he’ll race again, then when he does, if he’ll be as good as he was.”
Fighter Command did race again, almost six months after he almost died. He’s raced eight times on the comeback trail for two wins, a second, a third and two fourths.
One of those wins came in the most confronting of times, just hours after Tubbs learned her husband and Fighter Command’s driver, Greg Sugars, had passed away in his sleep in Sydney on 26 April.
Sugars, just 40, was one of Australasia’s champion drivers with over 4000 wins, including 71 at Group 1 level.
Together, he and Tubbs had rapidly grown into a training juggernaut.
Sugars’ death stunned and devastated the harness racing world.
“None of this has the same meaning without him. I’m still getting used to it, everything reminds me of him,” Tubbs said.
Fighter Command was “their” project, A pacer oozing with talent, but needing time and nurturing to mature and realise his potential.
He should be too classy and talented for his Beautide rivals, just as he was last year, but even this TAB Eureka may have come along a tad early.
“He’s still on a learning curve,” Tubbs said.
“But he’s a lot better than this time last year.”
There was a lot to like about Fighter Command’s eye-catching second in free-for-all company at Melton on 19 July.
Australia’s premier driver James Herbertson, who described Sugars as a mentor, idol and friend, will drive Fighter Command in the Beautide.
Tubbs said winning the Beautide is as far as she’s looking for now.
“Yes, there’s certainly unfinished business in the Eureka, but I’m not looking beyond step one at this stage and that’s winning this week,” she said. “If he does that, then hopefully everything goes right from there.”
