The Bathurst Gold Crown Carnival commenced on Wednesday night, and congratulations to Hunter Valley trainer, driver and industry mentor Michael Formosa.
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Formosa is often seen competing at Tamworth Paceway, and was named by the Bathurst Harness Racing Club as this year's honouree for their big carnival.
The 50-year-old has competed in nine Gold Crown finals over the years and tasted success with Ultimate Art and Shadow Runner.
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He has won the Gold Chalice with Ultimate Art.
Formosa said he felt honoured and humbled to be chosen as an honouree.
"The magnitude of such an honour, having my name placed beside some of harness racing's greatest contributors and legends, was a little bit hard to absorb," he said.
In his career Formosa has won 1177 races as a driver and trained 826 winners.
The opening night at Bathurst also had a strong Turnbull flavour, with Amanda Turnbull guiding Smooth Baht to a win in the Hondo Grattan Sprint.
The five-year-old gelding, trained by Steve Turnbull, had a mile rate for the 1730 metres of 1min 55.2sec.
The big $110,000 finals for two- and three-year-old's will be staged on Friday week.
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The 2022 Miracle Mile has finally been run and won, with King of Swing taking the crown for the third time.
King of Swing - trained by Belinda McCarthy and driven by her husband Luke - had a 1.2m win over stablemate Spirit of St Louis, which was driven by Jack Callaghan.
Better Eclipse (Greg Sugars) was 2.7m away in third place.
The mile rate for the $1 million grand circuit race was 1.49.2 for 1609m, with King of Swing the first horse to win the great race three times.
King Of Swing is a seven-year-old Rocknroll Hanover-Twist and Twirl horse with 82 race starts for 44 wins and 18 placings and a huge prize purse of $3,390,000. Her has now been retired to stud.
With eight runners in the Miracle Mile, it was of interest to see that six runners were trained by women!
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The Teal Appeal Campaign has wrapped up and over $70,000 has been raised by the female trainers and drivers in NSW.
Congratulations to local reinswoman Jemma Coney, who was the North West ambassador of the annual campaign, which raises funds for research in cervical cancer.
Great job ladies.
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