Top Melbourne jockey Craig Newitt was denied a win at his first day at the office when the Bruce Marsh-trained Taffetas launched a late assault to nose out Newitt’s mount You Da One in the $80,000 Open Benchmark 74 race.
Coincidentally ridden by Newitt, who was making his six-month Singapore contract debut, at her previous start in an Open Benchmark 83 race over 1400m on Gold Cup Day, Taffetas has now maintained a perfect record of three-from-three with Brazilian rider Manoel Nunes.
This season’s top jockey, who was making his comeback from injury, had not once, but twice mentioned about the five-year old Elusive Quality mare’s ability to go up to 1400m in the post-race interviews. Marsh heeded Nunes’ advice by finally putting her to the test over the mile, with the additional worry of a heavy handicap of 58kg for such a light-framed mare weighing on his mind.
Upon jumping from barrier eight, Taffetas ($25) followed in midfield position one-off the rails, while Invictus (Mohd Firdaus) charged forward from the wide stall to lead the field of nine.
Favourite You Da One ($14) tagged along at the rear of the bunch, and slowly made his way up at the point of turn, with the other Cliff Brown-trained Meshmaker (John Powell) and Taffetas quickening on the outside at the same time.
As Invictus punctured at the top of the straight and Meshmaker’s short burst of speed did not last long, Seed Of Speed (Corey Brown) joined Taffetas and You Da One with a strong bid. The trio looked hard to separate around the 200m, but Taffetas finished a shade better than You Da One, while Seed Of Speed had to settle for third another half a length away. The winning time on the Polytrack was 1min 40.82secs.
Despite the close contest, Nunes was already confident of victory. However, he did note that she would not have won had she not taken a sit.
“Yes I thought we’d won the race. She tried hard and she just got there,” said Nunes who is off to Hong Kong to ride Singapore star Spalato in the HK$15 million Group 1 Longines Hong Kong Sprint (1200m) on Sunday.
“It’s her first trip over 1600m, and she was carrying 58kg, so I didn’t want to push her too much at the beginning and just followed the right horse in front.
“If I used her up early, she might not have been able to stay till the end.”
Having already won aboard the Steven Burridge-trained Vitally Secret in a Maiden race earlier, Singapore’s champion-elect jockey went on to secure two more wins later that night, Rathausglockel and Euro Zone, both for Laurie Laxon for a four-timer that brought up his total to 108 wins, 26 wins clear of runner-up Danny Beasley. Now that he has made his riding comeback without aggravating his wrist injury, Nunes will head towards Hong Kong with renewed confidence.
“I am excited about Hong Kong, it is a very strong field, and I hope everything goes well,” he said.
While the jockey’s title is done and dusted, the title fight on the trainers’ premiership will go down to the wire on the last day of the season on Sunday.
Local trainer Alwin Tan, who began the evening two wins behind eight-time champion trainer Laxon, came close to drawing level when Art Of War and Platoon saluted, but Laxon fought back with a treble from To Be Remembered, Rathausglockel and Euro Zone to now extend the lead from two to three wins.
