by Adam Hamilton

If you believe in the harness racing gods, they have delivered what’s only fair for veteran Aussie horseman David Hewitt with Extreme Sea coming along in the twilight of his career.

The 4-year-old pacer has raced just nine times, but has everyone in Down Under harness racing talking.

One of those is top Aussie driver Nathan Jack, who insists Extreme Sea is the horse to beat in the world’s richest harness race, the $2.1 million TAB Eureka at Menangle on Sept. 7.

“He’s a beast,” Jack said. “I know the team very well and they’ve been telling me for ages how good the horse is. I think he’ll win the Eureka. He’s got unbelievable speed, but he’s not weak either.

“In 12 months from now, I think he’s the sort of horse everyone will be raving on about.”

As if beating some serious horses to win the $100,000 Riverina Championship final at just his seventh race start on March 31 wasn’t exciting enough, Extreme Sea has gone to a whole new level in two starts since.

He won a heat of the NSW Regional Metropolitan series at Menangle by 25.1m in a 1:54.3 mile rate for 2,300m on May 7 and stepped it up again to win the $100,000 final by 26.1m in a staggering 1:52.8 mile rate — just 1.4sec outside the track record — last Saturday night.

It will be a big shock if he doesn’t repeat the dose in the overall $100,000 NSW Regional final again at Menangle this Saturday night (May 25).

“As good as the past couple of wins have been, and they have been amazing, horses can’t do what he did at Wagga,” Jack said. “That’s when I saw what the Hewitts had been telling about him. I just shook my head at that win.”

It was that Wagga win which convinced leviathan owner Wayne Loader to make an early move and snap-up Extreme Sea for his TAB Eureka slot.

You have to go back about 30 years to understand why Extreme Sea is such a special horse to Hewitt and his family.

That’s when Hewitt was training a freakishly talented pacer called Red Sea.

Many felt he was the best pacer in Australia on sheer talent, but he was littered with injury issues.

With much care, attention and genius from Hewitt, Red Sea managed 24 starts — albeit across almost six years — and won 21 of them with two placings.

Hewitt remembers the day he saw a group of well-known Victorians in Sydney and they told him how highly they rated Rea Sea.

“He’d beat Golden Reign, he’s that good,” Hewitt said they told him.

Golden Reign was the same age as Red Sea and became a champion with 28 wins, including a famous 1995 Christchurch Inter Dominion, and banked almost $1.2 million.

“The best run at [racing] my guy had was 10 starts in the 1994-95 season and he won all 10 starts,” Hewitt said. That’s when those Victorians told me how good they thought he was. He’s a long, long story Red Sea. He had problems with all four legs in the end.

“It was such a shame to have a horse with his talent and never really get the chance to show it. I never thought I’d get another one like him, but maybe I have.”

That’s what makes the horse so special to the family, according to Hewitt’s son, Brad, who has driven Extreme Sea in all nine starts and is one of NSW’s most successful horsemen.

“I’m just so stoked for dad and mum [Maree],” Brad said. “Dad’s in his mid-60s now and worked seven days a week for as long as anyone can remember. All my life, I’ve heard the Red Sea stories. How good he was and what might have been without his injuries. Dad always said he’d never get another one like him and now this horse has come along.

“Red Sea was well before my time. I was just born, maybe six months old, when he won the Sapling Stakes as a 2-year-old. It’s such a great time for this horse to come along and he’s got all the making of being a horse to take dad into the big races, including the Grand Circuit, for the next few years. Not just part of it, but a serious player in it.”

Thankfully, Extreme Sea’s lack of racing for a 4-year-old hasn’t been due to injuries, more little niggles and some quirks.

“He was actually up and going at the very start of his 2-year-old year and we had him paid-up for Bathurst [Gold Crown, the first big Aussie 2-year-old race of the year],” David said. He was a very good 2-year-old, but there were a few little soreness things so we decided to give him time with the talent he’d shown.

“Then, when he came back, he galloped in his first qualifier when he pulled out from another horse’s back to make his [move] and it really scared him. It got in his head and it’s taken time to get him through that.”

Extreme Sea still hadn’t raced when last year’s inaugural TAB Eureka was raced at Menangle.

“We’ve always felt he’s one out of the box, but he’s been slow to mature and needed time,” Brad said. “Dad’s given him that and looks to be getting the rewards now. I know he’s not beating much, but you can tell by watching, and I certainly can when driving him, that he is a special talent.

“Those [races] at Wagga in March have really brought him on. He just feels like a different horse, more tractable and mature I mean, in his past three [starts], and he should just keep getting better like that, too.”

Providing this week goes as planned, Extreme Sea looks set to travel interstate for what could be the first of many times in his career.

The riches of the Queensland Constellations winter racing at Albion Park awaits him.

And so too does some serious opposition, which will give a much clearer guide to where he sits in the TAB Eureka pecking order.

“He’ll need to be racing when those good races are on in Brisbane to get ready for the Eureka, so it might as well be for good money up there,” David said. “The experience will be good for him as well.

“It’s the good thing about already having our Eureka slot, thanks to Wayne, we can pick and choose the right races to prepare him without having to worry about whether we get a slot or not.”

Father and son will travel together, but that’s when things could get tricky.

One of Brad’s stable stars, Captains Knock, is also Queensland-bound and is another to have landed an early TAB Eureka slot through Cordina Racing.

“Yeah, it’s not ideal to have a top 4-year-old of my own in the same season, but we’ll deal with that when we have to,” Brad said.

That could come as early as the $350,000 Group 1 Rising Sun at Albion Park on July 10. It’s a target race for both pacers.