FORMER STAR VICTORIAN STAYER REPRODUCES HIS BEST FORM

THE former Lloyd Williams-owned galloper, Activation, won his first race for almost three years in Monday’s $150,000 Darwin Cup.

Over 20,000 turned out to witness ‘the race that stops the Top End’ when Activation, now sporting the Peter Rowsthorn colors, scored a convincing win for young trainer Michael Hickmott.

The Activation win thwarted a bid by the runner-up Hawks Bay, to land a $100,000 Triple Crown bonus for Kyneton trainer, Neil Dyer.

A one-time highly promising stayer, Activation won the Premier's Cup at Rosehill in and ran second to Tawqeet in that year's G1 Metropolitan before finishing fourth behind the same horse in the Caulfield Cup.

On his last chance when he arrived in Darwin to join the Hickmott stable, Activation picked the perfect race to reproduce his best form.

“I just love this horse so much,” Hickmott said. “Everyone told me he wasn't the horse he was, I even asked my mate, (Melbourne jockey) Mark Pegus, what I had to do to get him right and he said, ‘get a new motor’. But I always knew he was going to be a good horse and he's proved it.”

Hickmott has blossomed from a rookie trainer to a two-time Darwin Cup winner by the age of 20. “I couldn't have done this without the help of my best mate (and right hand man in the stable) Louis Paech and my big brother, Robbie, who works for Lloyd Williams. I also can't be thankful enough to Dale Sutton and Mr Rowsthorn for sending the horse up to me.”

For the Wadham Park Syndicate, the $100,000 first prize cheque was their most substantial since buying the horse for a reported seven-figure sum from Lloyd Williams back in early 2007.

The Victorian Hawks Bay did everything possible in his bid to become the third horse to complete the Triple Crown. Trainer Neil Dyer was still proud of his charge.

MEANWHILE, star Northern Territory jockey, David Bates, was in an induced coma at Royal Darwin Hospital after suffering a fractured skull in a fall at Fannie Bay on Saturday.

It was his second fall in the space of three days after being involved in a three-horse tumble the previous Wednesday. Ironically, the two falls occurred within 20 metres of each other, near the 600m mark.

During his distinguished 27-year career in the saddle, Bates has tasted success in all of the Territory's premier races, including two Darwin and Alice Springs Cups, along with four Palmerston Sprints, a pair of NT Derbys, four Darwin Guineas and a Pioneer Sprint.