Weekend double adds to big season
‘‘Seven wins in the first eight weeks of the new season is a fantastic result...’’
Peter and Jess Brosnan’s run of form continued last weekend with a winning double that has set a new mark for their small stable.
Seven wins in the first eight weeks of the new season is a fantastic result for the husband and wife training partnership.
And while that mightn’t rank up with the big stables when the statistics are tallied up and analysed at the end of the season, it’s a perfect illustration of the fluctuations that all can be subject to in racing.
Last season – the first that Jess had joined her husband as a licensed trainer– produced just a solitary winner from 99 starters.
But 14 runners that finished second or third suggested the couple’s season wasn’t to be sneered at and the floodgates have really opened in the first two months of 2016-17.
At Ellerslie on Saturday Embraceable You added another win to the double she had notched in August with a determined performance at Ellerslie.
The George Duncan-owned and bred mare is at her best with rain about and found conditions right to her liking at the end of a very damp programme on Saturday.
The weather only got worse when the final jumps day of 2016 rolled around at Te Aroha on Sunday.
But stable runner Old Countess coped admirably with the wet and windy conditions to land her first win from five starts over hurdles.
The daughter of emerging jumps sire Zed had been placed twice in her previous four jumping assignments and is rated by her trainers as ideal material to aim at some of the bigger races coming up next year.
Jumps racing is nothing new to the Brosnan family.
Peter’s parents Sam and Marj having been associated with numerous big winners in their days as successful owner-trainers.
Only the bob of the head stood in the way of a third weekend winner when the Brosnan-trained Good Vibes went down narrowly in the final race at Te Aroha.
With a mud-splattered Jasmine Fawcett pushing hard up the inside fence, Good Vibes took a step closer to a career-first win, having finished third at her three previous starts.