The visiting Ready Eddie caused an upset to win the Prestige Hurdle (3200m) at Te Rapa and paid almost $30 on the totalisator. He had not won a race since last August at Riccarton when capturing a 0-1 win hurdle over 3100m and that came after not having won before that since September of 2013. The 7yo has had his issues but likes slow and heavy footing and now in his four career wins has three successes as a hurdler. His rider Shaun Fannin had a ripper day winning this hurdle feature and then three races later the steeplechase feature on the card. On a day where you could not be too far away turning for home and preferably right there in both flat and jumps races he had surged up from ninth to threaten at the 500m and led 200m later. San Pedro sat midfield then too moved right into contention before the home turn and tried hard to go with the winner from the 300m to the line. Nancho Lass raced close and fought on well considering she would like even heavier footing that will be coming as winter nears. Thenamesbond fought on after being a distant second then challenging across the top with a few others. Gagarin and Just Got Home both sat back then made wide runs before the home turn with the former finding the line better as the latter seemed to come to the end of it with 200m to travel. Both are improvers as early into the jumping season and bigger targets lay ahead for the pair. Master Michael plugged away so has improvement to come but the rest were well beaten. The clear leader Share The Blame had run his race a 1000m out and stopped like a pricked balloon so cannot run as fierce in front and expect to survive. The heavily sand-slitted Te Rapa creates cosmetic times but runners get beaten here out of sight so exhaustion still applies along with the manmade track bias having a constant affect. When many of these hurdlers get to the bottomless bogs of Riccarton, Trentham and Awapuni they will be sinking in mud and not sand though many tracks these days do use a lot of grit to fill holes and help drainage.