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It's all too common to hear of athletes wanting to raise the bar, but in this case, you have one that's constantly trying to lower it.

It's Speed Time set the track record by lowering the bar from 1:03 2/5ths to 1:03. It's the second time this season and third time over the past two years that the Aaron and Catrina

Sims' horse has rewritten the record book.

Aaron Sims said Speed Time wasn't even going to race at the Vesey Street track in order to rest up for this weekend's Champion of Champions stake races.

"It was basically a last minute decision to go out there and push," he said. "In all honesty we were going to leave him home because we have the Champion of Champions this weekend and we were going to save him. I decided to take him because I figured with a week off he would be a righteous fool the next week.

"Up until then there were no real fast times on the night. I told Catrina to go out there for the win and don't push him. When she got ready to race she asked: "What do you want to do? Do you think the track is fast?

"I saw he was full of himself warming up so I said 'Let him go. Push him for a good time and we'll see what happens.'

Aaron Sims said it didn't look very fast from where he was watching at the trailor.

But when the track announcer said "'you've just witnessed something special, I knew right then and there it was a fast time, but how fast I didn't know. Then they came over the mike and said he just set a new track record at a 1:03 flat."

Catrina Sims was elated to help lower the mark by so much because now the pressure is off.

She said Speed Time "can be a real jerk behind the gate, especially when he's on the rail. He doesn't like to get up on the rail too early, because if you do and the gate isn't moving or going too slow, he'll try and take everybody to the right of him out.

"I was nervous about the start to make sure I get the start right. Not only that, he tends to be a little sluggish coming out of the gate. There are quite a few horses in his time bar that are much faster than he is."

Getting him up to the starting gate, she added: "Once I got the start, then I was thinking 'Holy cow, I need to get him to the start line first before anybody else does so that the start flag goes down when he goes down.

"We did that, because the pony next to us, Kick-A-Poo Brave, was coming out of the gate hard, but once I got him out front, it was smooth sailing after that. Then it's a matter of getting him to relax a bit and not burn himself out too soon."

She said in the home stretch she pushed Speed Time again, but didn't feel it was going to be a track record, but knew she had a good time.

"The last two times when we broke the track record, I came back in and told Aaron that didn't feel very fast or very good and, lo and behold, we broke the record. But this time he felt like he was absolutely moving."

Pressure's off

"I have had so much pressure on my shoulders to try and shatter the record so we don't have to worry about someone else breaking it.

"We have quite a few ponies that are knocking on the record's door. I feel relieved that we've done the 1:03 flat because quite a few people said that he could do it, and now he's done I'm looking for that relief now because I don't want that pressure on me."

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