Godolphin’s fill-in trainer misses Straddie win

Darren Beadman missed the biggest moment of his fledgling training career when Impending won the A$1.5 million Stradbroke Handicap at Doomben on Saturday.

Impending ($20) finished strongly down the centre of the track to beat In Her Time ($20) by a neck.

The favourite Clearly Innocent ($4.80) was third a length back in the group one race.

But Godolphin boss Henry Plumptre revealed Beadman was too sick to be at Doomben after being struck down by a serious virus during the week.

“Darren has had a pretty ordinary week. He got a virus and like all horse trainers thought it was a cold,” Plumptre said.

“But it got worse and we sent him to hospital. He got out Thursday and he is fine. But I told him if he came up here I would fire him.”

Beadman won 86 group one races as a jockey but has been working as the Australia Godolphin trainer for six weeks after John O’Shea resigned in May. James Cummings takes over next month but Impending has made certain that Beadman’s name will be in the record books as a group onewinning jockey and trainer.

Plumptre said Godolphin had been fortunate to have someone as experienced as Beadman as a fill in trainer.

“He has done a great job in the past six weeks,” Plumptre said.

Impending continued the great run of three-year-olds in the Stradbroke, being seventh of that age to win in the past 25 years with the latest Sincero in 2011. It was Godolphin’s fifth group one winner in Australia for the season and Plumptre believes Impending can boost the numbers in 2017-18. “He will head home now and we can have a talk about the spring,” he said.

Winning jockey Corey Brown brought up his fourth group one win since returning from Singapore.

Dean Yendall, who rode In her Time, said it had been a great run by the mare as she was caught deep for most of the race.