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By Greg Prichard

There wasn’t a more good-looking win at Taree on Tuesday than the one by Handsome, which ran as easily the shortest-priced favourite of the day and blitzed his rivals by 7.36 lengths in the Professionals Harrington Class 1 And Maiden Plate over 2000m.

Handsome did its early racing in England, where it had six starts for a win and two seconds and showed great improvement once it got out to 2000 metres and beyond.

Handsome (Dylan Gibbons; blue, white & black checked sleeves) finishes 2nd to Oakfield Warpaint at Wyong last month. Image by Bradley Photographers

Newcastle trainer Kris Lees has had the five-year-old gelding for three starts now and after a setback last summer – when Handsome made its Australian debut only to suffer a tendon injury – he’s back and well and with a second placing followed by a devastating win.

Handsome was beautifully placed under the conditions of the race and started as a $1.35 favourite.

Jockey Dylan Gibbons took advantage of a gap along the rails to zoom into calculations approaching the home turn and the race was quickly over after that.

Lees, who has had great success racing imported horses, will now seek to find out just how good Handsome is by taking him to Sydney for his next run.

“The conditions of the race really suited him, but he still had to get the job done and he did it quite well,” Lees said.

“I don’t want to get too carried away, but we don’t know what his ceiling is yet so we’ll find out.

“He looks to have improvement in him, so we’ll take him to town late this month or early February. Then we’ll know more about what sort of horse we’ve got.”

Gibbons rode a treble on the day and Lees trained a double.

Meanwhile, jockey Ashley Morgan, who also rode a treble, was determined to lead on Ottilie in the feature race, the Harrington Hotel Harrington Cup Benchmark 66 Handicap (1300m).

It’s from there that the four-year-old mare does her best work and once she had quickly burnt the others off to get to the front Morgan was able to settle her and dictate the terms to his liking.

Ottilie bowled along, forcing most of her competitors off the bit approaching the home turn, and then skipped away at the top of the straight. The race was over at that stage and Ottilie - the $2.60 favourite - went on to win by 1.21 lengths from Royal Charge, with Imatruestar close up in third.

It was Ottilie’s fourth run for Newcastle trainer Jason Deamer since being transferred from the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott stable in Sydney. She had been competitive for Deamer but finished just behind the placings in two starts at the provincials and a city midweek race.

Deamer was confident this was the right race for her to get back in the winner’s stall.

“She’d been racing in much harder company and was down in grade in this race,” he said. “Up in weight a bit, sure, but we were expecting her to run well.

“She couldn’t quite get there in those harder races, but she was certainly putting in. We played around with a few things for this race, added a tongue tie, and it was just a nice race for her.

“She’s raced by Dynamic Syndications and they love winning cup races, so everybody’s happy.”