If the trotter in Australia is the poor relation of the pacer, no one has tried to explain this to Chris Lang. Over the past decade, trotters from the Nagambie stables he and his wife Sharon operate have won just about every Group or Classic event in Australia for this gait. Chris has chalked up five Breeders Crown winners; produced two Inter Dominion champions; won two Cochran Cups; had two Grand Prix winners on the Grand Circuit; along with four Derby and three Oaks successes, the blue-ribbon classics of horse racing.
The Lang stable team has won more than 600 races and $3.8 million in stakes! Chris believes he is only warming up to win more of the best. He has two exciting additions to his young team waiting in the wings. Chris selected these at the recent New Zealand Sales for two of his major clients, Duncan McPherson and Jim Connelly.
No less than four of his horses have been voted Australian ‘Trotter of the Year’. Working back from this latest season, these stars were Sundons Gift, Kyvalley Road, Right Interest and Jauriol. Sundons Gift will be hard to beat for this award in the current season.
Following Sundons Gift’s recent victory in the Inter Dominion Trotting Championship at Moonee Valley, Swedish officials were quick to extend an invitation to Chris to take Australia’s No. 1 trotter to Europe and go head-to-head against the world’s best, an invitation he has since accepted.
The ability to select young trotters at yearling sales in New Zealand and Melbourne has played no small part in his success. However, he has also experienced wonderful success when taking over ‘cast offs’ from other stables, spending time and patience in turning their form around. The Lang’s have established a first-class training establishment comprising three tracks -- a 1000-metre all-weather training track, a 950 metre heavy sand jogging track and a revolutionary L-shaped mile track; a stable barn that can take up to 20 horses; along with day yards and irrigated spelling paddocks with the latest in safety fencing.
Between this establishment and the nearby Hume Highway they have recently opened Aldebaran Park, the latest ‘state-of-the-art’ facilities in agistment farms. This venture is in partnership with Duncan and Lyn McPherson; along with opening a stud operation there to stand Aldebaran Yankee, the four-year-old stallion Chris rates as the best-bred trotting horse ever to stand in Australia.
With Sharon spending a great deal of her time managing the stud farm these past months, Chris continues on his winning way each week with son Chris Junior the stable’s number two driver. The number of quinellas the stable brings up is quite remarkable. The stable can also call on a third driver in brother Gavin Lang. There are a great many in Australian harness racing who rate him the top reinsman in Australasia.