Racing
Townsville Friday: Astra Star with Norther Jewel hopes
Rockhampton trainer Kris Hansen is confident talented three-year-old Astra Star can end a string of frustrating placings and book a Guineas campaign during the Central and Northern Queensland winter carnivals in Townsville on Friday.
Astra Star – a Sean Cormack mount – will start one of the main fancies in the $105,000 Northern Jewel at Cluden Park.
A $90,000 buy at the Magic Millions sales, Astra Star is owned by the now retired former trainer Graeme Green who recently relocated from the central Queensland beef city in Rockhampton to Emerald.
Although Green still holds a trainers' licence, he has no plans to return to training and will soon embark on his dream of travelling the countryside in his caravan.
Kris Hansen, 47, is the son of respected Rockhampton trainer Kevin Hansen and has been involved in racing most of his life.
He was an apprentice jockey for his father before weight ended a promising career when his family was based at Ipswich.
Hansen also worked as a track rider and foreman for 10 years with top Sydney trainer John Hawkes as well as working with Gillian Heinrich and former trainer Bryan Guy at the Gold Coast.
He also spent time riding work in Singapore.
"It was good experience working for the Hawkes team and I rode a lot of Group horses for them like Anthems and Freemason," Hansen said.
Hansen, who has a small team of nine horses in work, has been training less than three years and still helps his father with stable duties.
Although Hansen believes Astra Star will eventually develop into a stayer, he's confident the son of Cosmic Force will be ultra-competitive.
Astra Star has placed at his past four starts including seconds at his last three outings.
At his last appearance, Astra Star finished second at Rockhampton behind the John Wigginton-trained Power Of Katie who has won five of her nine starts.
"Power Of Katie looks to be a very good filly and my bloke did a good job to run second behind her," Hansen said.
"His last four runs have all been very good and he was beaten each time by an older horse and he's back against his own age this time."
Hansen believes Astra Star's best distance will eventually be around 2000 metres but he's happy to keep her in sprint races for the time being.
"He's definitely going to stay up to 2000 metres and possibly 2400 metres and he's just like a good stayer who races well fresh over shorter trips like this," he said.
"All going well he'll be aimed at the Guineas races in Rockhampton, Mackay and Townsville and he may even go up for the Cairns carnival later on," he said.
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