One-horse race starts program after eight scratchings

With all eight of his rivals scratched before the 9am deadline all Hilly had to do was safely complete the course to be declared the winner.

In strange scenes he did just that.

Six of the starters were trained by Ben Yole, who is at the centre of a damning report released on Thursday, while his stable representative Robert Walters had the other two runners.

All were scratched leaving Hilly the last one standing.

It was certainly a memorable win from the Wagga reinsman.

"I've knocked up another win so I'm stoked with that," Kahlefeldt said.

It was in stark contrast to how Kahlefeldt and his father Paul, who owns and trains the 11-year-old, thought the race would pan out.

They had been discussing tactics on Thursday night before the scenario changed dramatically.

"Even last night Dad and I were talking about how do we approach it as we were obviously up against in terms of numbers," Kahlefeldt said.

"We were still talking tactics up until last night and what we could do to give ourselves the best chance and all that changed this morning."

After all the scratchings they contacted stewards and were told to approach the race as normal, needing to be at Leeton an hour before the meeting started.

With the result assured as long as they completed the 2147 metres, Kahlefeldt was only worried about running quick enough sectionals not to be fined.

"The main thing for Hilly was to make sure he stayed switched on with no horses around him as at home doing track work solo he has a tendency of switching off a lot," he said.

"We did have to be mindful of the sectionals today as not to attract a fine from the stewards so that was the main thing I was worried about if he switched off too much but we made a slight gear change to him and he was pretty switched on."

With his opening half of 63.6 seconds, well inside the 66 seconds allowed, Hilly rated a mile rate of 2:03.3 to record his 16^th career victory.

While the win counts, it was more of a trackwork hit out for the 207-race veteran.

"He's an old, seasoned horse Hilly and has been around plenty of times so we just had to make sure he got around and did everything safely," Kahlefeldt said.

"We treated it as a pretty solid track work as he's coming back from an injury so we wanted to get some fitness into him, as he will be racing at Albury next week.

"We still wanted him to have a good hit out and I think we got that."

Hilly was the first winner Kahlefeldt drove in 2017.

No matter the circumstances he was pleased to get another one.

"Hilly provided me with my first winner when I started many years ago and I said to Dad regardless of today this could be my last winner on him as he's not getting any younger," Kahlefeldt said.

"When you win your races you like to win them against the competition you're assigned but you can't help these circumstances today so a win's a win's and I'm happy to drive another winner on Hilly.

"Hopefully it's not his last but if it is it's a memorable one."

A similar scenario is set to unfold at Launceston on Friday night with Yole warned off from all venues controlled by Tasracing after the Murrihy Report found serious concerns surrounding race fixing and animal abuse.