The Inverleigh-based octogenarian will take the reins behind his mare Leanne Leeann in the second heat of the SENTrack Inter Dominion Trotting Championship at Ballarat on Saturday night.
Shepparton will host ID22 heats on Tuesday, November 29 before the third and last round at Geelong on Saturday, December 3.
Qualifiers from both pacing and trotting divisions then progress to grand finals at Melton on Saturday, December 10.
Kuchenmeister admits he hadn’t harboured ambitions of taking part in the series right up until this week.
“I had the horse entered for a race at Melton on Thursday and then her owner Brooke (Sadler) rang and said that we had got a start in the Inter Dominion,” Kuchenmeister said.
The six-year-old mare has defied the odds in the past and again she has managed to string together some consistent recent form despite interruption to her normal routine courtesy of the incessant rain.
“I haven’t been able to get on my track at home which isn’t far from the Barwon River, so I have been taking her to Mick Cole’s place at Bannockburn,” Kuchenmeister said.
While the veteran horseman will be making his on-track debut in the Inter Dominion this weekend, he has enjoyed participating on two previous occasions with Group One placegetter Illawong Ian in 2004 and 2006.
“I wasn’t allowed to drive in the city back then, so I got Brian Gath to drive him and he ended up winning the consolation the first time around,” he said.
In 2006, Illawong Ian provided Kuchenmeister with a career highlight when he qualified for the Inter Dominion final at Moonee Valley.
“He was placed in both the heats and then had no luck in the final,” he said.
Kuchenmeister combined his occupation as a limousine driver with training trotters for many years after saluting with the unusually named pacer Devrats in the early 1970s.
“I got him from the pound and he was a bag of bones, so I named him Devrats which is starved backwards,” he said.
Kuchenmeister recalls first setting eyes on Leanne Leeann after breeder Paul Powles asked him to “take this mare”.
“He told me that I had to go and catch her each day and she’ll come round, but it took a couple of months to get her to like me,” he said.
Kuchenmeister concedes perfecting Leanne Leeann’s footwear is a time-consuming exercise.
“She is a technically difficult horse to shoe as she hits her knee and a back boot,” he said.
A recent encouraging effort at Beckley Park gives Kuchenmeister cause for optimism as Leanne Leeann faces the biggest task of her career.
“She didn’t touch a boot at Geelong, which means we are getting there in terms of her shoeing,” he said.
“Her manners are getting better all the time and although she loses a bit of ground around the turns, she balances up in the straight and keeps going.”
Kuchenmeister, the second eldest active licensed driver in Victoria, is intent on enjoying the experience on the biggest stage of all in the next fortnight.
“When else am I going to get the chance to drive in an Inter Dominion?” he said.
- John Dunne
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