London heeds the call
MARK DIXON has done a masterful job with London Call, a gelding that has not been the easiest to train, but apart from keeping the gelding sound and sane, Dixon has cherry-picked his races to the point where he has won nine of his 16 starts.
London Call’s record is peppered with lay-offs between runs but Dixon has been smart enough to target pinnacle stakes races where London Call inevitably has an advantage.
London Call showed in both the Gr1 Golden Horse Sprint and the Gr1 Mercury Sprint, both won by Bull Valley, that he is just below top class but not by far.
At Scottsville yesterday, back in Pinnacle Stakes company, he had plenty in his favour in spite of carrying top weight and didn’t disappoint.
Brandon Lerena, riding his first winner back since his Mauritian nightmare, had his mount out and rolling from the jump and he never let up.
Redcarpet Captain
Redcarpet Captain challenge briefly and Secret Captain was doing his best work late but London Call was never seriously threatened.
The Qatar Racing Club has identified the South African Jockey Academy as a potential training ground for their riders in an effort to upgrade racing in the Gulf State and the first batch of ten apprentices were put through their paces in the Al Rayyan Apprentice Cup, restricted to the Qatar apprentices.
Most of the riders have limited racing experience but Abdulla Saleh kept Paul Lafferty’s 12-1 chance Tropical’s Son running to the line to hold the more fancied stable companion Freddie Flint but there was plenty of huffing-and-puffing behind them.
By their very nature objections are often contentious but the one-eyed Silent Obsession has been on the receiving end on two occasions.
First time across the line first he was on the wrong end of a boardroom decision before winning next time out.
Yesterday, he had the filly Ideal Winter leaning on him for much of the home straight.
Keagan de Melo was quick to object on Silent Obsession’s behalf, “he never left me alone in the straight,” he protested but his protestations were in vain with the result standing.
Had there been a head or less in it at the line, De Melo’s protest may have been upheld but Silent Obsession was half-a-length back at the line.
The current ruling on objections is that the objection board must be confident that the offended would have beat the offender.
Clearly in this case the objection board were not convinced.