King Larry fresh and firing for Lone Pine charge

Following the feature formline is primed to pay dividends for connections of a tough home track five-year-old at Monday’s Muswellbrook meeting.

King Larry, a still lightly raced and versatile son of Sebring Sun, lines up in the feature Benchmark 82 Lone Pine Charge over 1000m.

And having chased hard behind the same dominant winner in a recent feature sprint series at the track, this gelding gets the chance to grab a fourth career win at only his 15th start.

Always sparingly raced since debuting nearly two years ago, King Larry last won in early April last year when finishing best to claim a BM 66 at Port Macquarie.

Since then, it’s been somewhat of a frustrating and interrupted schedule, although he made up for lost time with consecutive runs in competitive Class 3 Highways late last year and into 2026.

But after another six week let-up, he signalled the good times aren’t far away again chasing home the smart Durova in the feature Skellatar Sprint here in early March.

Then three weeks later in the deeper BM 92 Skellatar Final, King Larry charged home late to finish within two lengths of Durova, which duly claimed his seventh win from just 13 starts.

That form naturally reads very well for Monday’s assignment on a suitably firming track.

In a competitive betting affair, King Larry opened nearly $5.00 well behind early favourite Silencio Porfavor ($2.70) from the Matthew Smith stable at Warwick Farm.

Promising young jockey Shannen Llewellyn keeps the ride on King Larry, and is hellbent improving further on an impressive 20 per cent winning strike-rate this month.

Llewellwyn has 10 wins from her last 50 rides, including the feature Wellington Town Plate eight days ago, and aboard exciting provincial sprinter Lightning Glory who went within half a second of the 1200m track record at Wyong last Thursday.

A win would be an even bigger tonic for local trainer Wayne Wilkes, who has a stay of proceedings while appealing a four-month ban for an incident at Taree on February 12.