Go another round with Whats Up The Hill - why he can deliver a KO on Friday night

His form line is looking a little bleak but it might pay to stick with Whats Up The Hill ($14, $3.10) at Auckland on Friday night.

The well bred trotter gave punters another upper cut last week, galloping when leading 400 metres out but co-trainer Ray Green revealed he had a legitimate excuse.

“We had to change his sulky on the track just before the start of the race when the hub collapsed on one of the wheels. The replacement was a bit short and he was touching the wheels in the running.”

That saw the three-year-old run too keenly in front and, when the trailing favourite Paramount Lady came off his back and swished round him, Green said he tried to go with her and didn’t have the ringcraft to stay down trotting.

“Apart from that I thought he went super,” Green said. “Taking the hood off him definitely helped and he led easily from seven. He just needs more practice.”

Whats Up The Hill reverts from a mobile start to a stand on Friday night and gets into a considerably easier race, with six of his 10 rivals non-winners. And, while he starts from a 30 metre handicap, he has made some swift beginnings in recent weeks.

Punters will be wary, however, that he has done things right in only three of his eight starts, prone to switching into a pace, a trait obviously inherited from his brilliant dam Escapee.

Green and his training partner Nathan Delany line up only one other runner for Lincoln Farms on Friday night, Lincoln La Moose ($26, $2.20) in the final race.

But while Green says the horse was a certainty beaten at his last start, he’s not holding his breath for a race where the wide rating band has him beaten virtually before he sets foot on the track.

Lincoln La Moose (R52) is forced to line up in a R44 to R67 event and take on Greased Lightning, a last-start fifth in Marketplace’s Northern Derby.

The opposition virtually explodes any confidence Green might have had about Lincoln La Moose’s last run when driver Peter Ferguson was starved for racing room all the way down the home straight at Cambridge. He finished fifth, untried, 1.7 lengths behind winner Power N Glory.

But that was in a R49 to R53 race and didn’t have anything of the calibre of Greased Lightning (R67), Seaclusion (R60) or Runkle Crunch (R58).

And it’s not as if his much better performed rivals could get into any traffic problems with only a five-horse field.

“It once again shows just what a shortage of horses we have in the north,” Green said. “He’ll just have to go round to drop points.”