Signify the one for ‘Snooky’
‘‘Snooky’’ Cowan is still coming to grips with his first Group I win as a trainer and thinks it will take a while to sink in.
‘‘Everyone keeps tell me I’ve won a Group I, so it must be true,’’ he said yesterday.
Cowan, 55, a former top jumps jockey, said Signify’s win the $250,000 JR & N Berkett Telegraph at Trentham on Saturday had a to rate as his number one achievement as a trainer.
What makes it so special for him is that Signify is owned by his wife, Tracey. They bought him for only $5500 at the New Zealand Bloodstock 2013 South Island sales, so it is one of those reminder heading in to the rich Karaka sales that it’s not necessarily the $1 million buys that take the major prizes.
And not necessarily the stables with scores of horses. Cowan trains three horses - and two of them are having a spell.
That leaves Signify, known in the stable as ‘‘George’’, who Cowan has long thought was capable of a a big race.\
And while most of his horses are trained for sale, there was no prospect of that happening with George.
‘‘Tracey said ‘if he goes, then I’ll go,’’ chuckled Cowan, who rides his own horses in work before tackling his job as a machine operator at a plastics factory in Ashburton. He has always thought a lot of Signify. ‘‘He is a horse with a lot of presence about him.’’
He races best with cover and things fell into place on Saturday with apprentice Racha Cuneen showing plenty of maturity in judging the run, as Signify nosed out Start Wondering in a stirring finish.
‘‘With horses on his inside and outside, that put him in a slipstream and that helped,’’ Cowan said.
It was Cuneen’s second Group I victory, following on from his success with La Diosa in the Group I Thousand Guineas at Riccarton in November.
Cowan said he had no firm plans for Signify. He is considering sprint races at Riccarton and Wingatui in the coming weeks. ‘‘But we will wait and see what the handicapper does after this win.’’
Cowan’s success brought back plenty of memories. He was a flat jockey, who had seven wins on the mighty Grey Way, before weight issues swayed him to over fences.
His big successes were Rock Crystal in the Great Northern Steeplechase (1986) and Dee Cee Seven in the Grand National Steeplechase (1998).
He also rode Eric The Bee to win the Grand National Hurdles four days before Dee Cee Seven won the steeples.
‘‘That steeples win meant a hell of a lot and I got a lot of satisfaction from it because I had won a National just like my father had.’’
Cowan’s father, ‘‘Acka’’, won the 1962 Grand National Hurdles on Vamoose, and the steeples on Game Call (1966) and Enceeoh (1972).
Evan Rayner, who co-trains Telegraph runner-up Start Wondering, wasn’t offering any excuses, after his horse’s game attempt to win a notable Group I double after his Railway success.
‘‘We will look at the big sprint at Waikato (Group I NRM Sprint over 1400m on February 11), but he might be looking for a mile now.’’
The tragedy of the race was the death of First Serve, who broke down during the running and had to be put down.
Cuneen was one of a number of jockeys who consoled the mare’s jockey Samantha Wynne after the race and she was given dispensation to stand down from riding Show MacCool in the next race. It won, ridden by Alysha Collett.
‘‘It’s just devastating. She’s been such a good horse for me, she was my favourite and she deserved to run in a race like that,’’ said Wynne, who had ridden the mare in all seven of her wins for the Michael and Mathew Pitman stable.