Trainer Gavin Bedggood made the right decision and added a few extra dollars to the bank account with the win of No Effort at Sandown.

Bedggood had the option of running the mare in Saturday’s Ladbrokes Bet Ticker Handicap (1800m) or the Ladbrokes Cash In Handicap (1600m).

Electing the former, No Effort got into the handicap after apprentice Carleen Heffel’s 3kg claim with 51.5kg while the mare would have carried 57.5kg in the 1600m option.

Bedggood told Heffel to make the opposition carry their weight and the apprentice carried out the instructions to the letter.

Heavily backed, No Effort ($4.80) held on to defeat the $3.50 favourite Bedford by a long neck with Mongolian Marshal ($21) three lengths away third.

No Effort relished the heavy conditions, the first time the mare had been back on that type of ground since her maiden victory at Moe almost two years ago.

“My original plan was to run her in the benchmark 78 mile race today but the prospect of 51 kilos of this race versus 57.5 after a claim in the other race was the deciding factor and there looked to be no speed on paper,” Bedggood said.

“Carleen rode her exactly how I asked, got creeping down the hill and was full bore coming down the dip and ‘catch me if you can’.

“If we were run down late then so be it, but she was too tough.”

Heffel said Bedggood was confident No Effort had the weight and the conditions to prove hard to beat.

“She’s a tough mare,” Heffel said.

“You’ve really got to set the right tempo for the weight and if you go too slow, they’re going to storm around you, and if you go too quickly you might not have anything left.

“It was all about setting the right tempo and get going when we needed to.”

Article from JustHorseRacing.com.au