HORSE WITH ‘HORRIBLE LEGS’ CHASES SPOT IN THE STRADDIE
HE’S the home-bred hero who had terrible legs they would have been happy to win a Kilcoy maiden with.
Now the remarkable story of Soxagon, already with nearly $800,000 prizemoney in the bank, could strike a fresh crescendo if he wins Saturday’s BRC Sprint at Doomben which offers a golden ticket into the Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap.
Soxagon is trained by Mark Currie, but it was his son Ben who first laid eyes on the youngster, with Soxagon the product of a mare who cost $600.
A young Soxagon had leg surgery on his check ligaments and breeder Brian Burke convinced Ben Currie to take him sight unseen after getting no response from five other trainers.
Currie almost fell over when he first saw Soxagon.
“We still laugh about it now because of how he has turned out,” Currie said. “He was a skinny gawky thing and his legs had all these white marks and all his tendons were pretty thick to say the least. I rang Brian to say I wasn’t expecting him to look like that, but he said the horse had been scanned by a vet and they had cleared him, there was nothing structurally wrong with him.
“His legs just look horrible, they still do, I don’t know if it’s the way the soft tissue has healed but they just look awful.”
Soxagon is an $8.50 chance in the Group 3 BRC Sprint.