Bridgman’s double includes cup
JASON Bridgman had one of the most satisfying days of his training career last Saturday when he saddled up the winners of two of the features on the Manawatu Racing Club’s major annual race meeting.
High-profile stable member Burgundy set the ball rolling with a dogged win in the Listed Fairdale/Goodwood Studs Flying Handicap and in the next race Better Than Ever refound winning form in the Group II Awapuni Gold Cup.
Burgundy’s profile dates back to his purchase more than two years ago by Te Akau Racing principal David Ellis for $1.3 million at the Karaka yearling sales. His value was set as a threequarter brother to former star Te Akau galloper Darci Brahma, and after Saturday his race record stands at seven wins from 12 starts.
Better Than Ever, one of the cheaper lots to go through the Karaka Premier Yearling Sale ring at $80,000 in 2008, returned to New Zealand midway through last year after the form that had taken him to champion status in Singapore tapered off.
The Blandford Lodge-bred galloper set the benchmark when trained by expat Laurie Laxon, winning his first 13 starts in Singapore and 16 in total, but a bleeding attack in his final start at Kranji spelt an end to his career in that part of the world.
Better Than Ever’s owner, Singapore businessman Tang Weng Fei, also had last season champion two-year-old Warhorse racing for him in New Zealand from Te Akau Stables and it was an obvious option in deciding to send his best horse to the same destination in the hope of a form revival.
It’s been no easy task getting the six-year-old to rediscover his mojo, but that he has done with four placings leading up to his win in Saturday’s Awapuni Gold Cup.
‘‘His form had tapered right off plus he had bled in the last of them, so he presented quite a challenge when he arrived here,’’ says Jason, who is in his third season at the helm of Te Akau’s New Zealand training operation after taking over from Mark Walker when he relocated to Singapore in mid-2010.
‘‘The whole team here has played a part in getting him back to form which makes it especially satisfying.’’
With little in the way of options for Better Than Ever for the remainder of the autumn, he’s likely to go for a spell and return to training with a view to the Hawke’s Bay spring treble of the 1400-metre Makfi Challenge Stakes, the 1600m Windsor Park Plate and the 2040m Spring Classic.
‘‘Now that he’s proven himself locally across the full range of distances, those races seem the logical target,’’ Jason added.
Stablemate Burgundy, on the other hand, has further major targets on his immediate horizon. They will most likely centre on the Queensland winter carnival, with the A$1 million Stradbroke Handicap the ultimate target.
Just as Darci Brahma put together a race record under Mark Walker’s training that set him up for a stallion career, so too is it the aim for Burgundy to live up to his yearling price tag and match his pedigree with performance.
‘‘That was quite a tough run on Saturday so we’ll let the dust settle for a few days then we’ll have a team talk between Mark, myself and David and make a plan,’’ Jason said.
‘‘We could start with some of the lead-up black-type races in Brisbane, see how he adapts to their style of racing and take it from there.
‘‘He’s shown this season that 1400m is his favourite trip and if things come together, the Stradbroke at the same distance could be right race for him.’’
While Better Than Ever’s weekend win was the second leg of a Te Akau Matamata double, it was also the first leg of a double for his dam Songfest, with an added Te Akau Singapore twist.
At Friday night’s Kranji meeting Mark Walker saddled up Om, a half-brother to Better Than Ever by Darci Brahma, to win his first start. The three-year-old is raced by Blandford Lodge coowner Sir Owen Glenn, who is also the owner of Criterion, a Blandford Lodge-bred and reared two-year-old who is set to run in this Saturday’s A$3.5m Golden Slipper Stakes in Sydney, having won his last two starts and now a leading candidate for the twoyear-old feature.
Back in Singapore, Mark Walker’s stable is running hot with a tally of 26 wins, nine more than the next on the trainer’s premiership. The star of the team is former Matamata-trained Flying Fulton, whose run of feature race success has established him as the leading performer on the Kranji synthetic Polytrack.
Now in his third season, Mark is well on the way to setting a fresh personal benchmark with just three months of the current season behind him. In 2011 he finished eighth on the premiership with 48 wins and last year’s tally of 42 secured the same premiership placing.
In Singapore jockey ranks, former Matamata apprentice Harry Kasim is rapidly making a name for himself, with a rush of eight wins on the two-day Easter weekend programme taking his first year tally to 20, nearly double that of his nearest rival.
Back on the home front, Jason Bridgman’s weekend double has been tempered by an official investigation into the double nomination of Better Than Ever in both the Awapuni Gold Cup and the Flying Handicap.
The suggestion is that Better Than Ever was entered for the Flying Handicap as a means of scaling down his stablemate Burgundy’s handicap weight. Racing Rule 526 states that: ‘‘A person shall not enter, or cause to be entered, a horse in a race with the sole purpose of affecting the weight to be allocated to any other horse entered in such race.’’
Jason was questioned by Racing Integrity Unit stewards when he made the dual entry last Tuesday and again on raceday, having scratched Better Than Ever from the Flying Handicap the previous day.
Following Saturday’s interrogation, stewards stated that investigations would continue with respect to a perceived breach of Rule 526.
In other news, Hong Kong apprentice Kei Chiong celebrated her first win as a jockey when riding the Wayne and Vanessa Hillis-trained Smartly to victory at Ellerslie on Saturday. There were no complaints from Kei when she shared her landmark win with the Sam Spratt-ridden Bronte Walk.
Kei, who is indentured to Graham Richardson, has been in New Zealand for the past year as part of the Hong Kong Jockey Club’s apprentice training scheme.
Gary Hennessy’s ambitions to prove Ocean Park in the northern hemisphere are over following the horse’s below-par performance in Sunday’s Dubai Duty Free.
Ocean Park raced lengths below his best, believed to be feeling the effects of the long flight to Dubai, which left him 10 kilograms below his previous start winning weight.
He came out of the race with a leg injury and will now return home, with a decision yet to be made whether he is prepared for another tilt at the Cox Plate in the spring or retired to stud.