Chaos at the last jump in steeples
Chocolate Fish didn’t win the Koral Steeplechase but he deserves a prize for going the extra mile.
The field of eight runners had to jump 17 fences at Riccarton on Saturday but a dramatic turn of events at the last forced Chocolate Fish to make his 18th leap of the race.
At odds of 13-1, Notabadrooster and his jockey Will Gordon seemingly had the race in the bag when they cruised up to the last fence but that’s when the contest took a dramatic turn on the opening day of the Grand National Carnival.
Just as punters who backed Notabadrooster were counting their money, the horse went down on landing to throw a certain win away.
Chocolate Fish, with nowhere to go, seemed destined to fall over the top of Notabadrooster but he and jockey Shaun Phelan cleverly put in another jump to go straight over the top and run home to finish second.
Notabadrooster was straight back to his feet to continue on and Gordon is also believed to have escaped without injury. It was a lucky escape for Gordon with Chocolate Fish’s hooves narrowly missing the jockey as he lay on the track.
Amanood Lad took a step toward achieving the dream result when scoring the fortuitous win. It’s a day trainer Paul Nelson will never forget as the win by the 14-year-old credited him with his 200th training success.
‘‘He’s won the Great Northern Steeples and the Wellington Steeples and it would be nice if he could win all three big ones,’’ the Hastings trainer said, referring to the Grand National Steeplechase (5600m) at Riccarton this Saturday.