Jockey Nooresh Juglall made the most of a pick-up ride aboard White Hunter to make away with the top prize in the $100,000 Open Benchmark 89 race over 1400m on Friday night.
Trainer James Peters booked the Mauritian lightweight jockey after Corey Brown could not make the 51.5kgs (1 ½ kilos over), just leaving very simple instructions how to ride the frontrunner. Go forward, stack up the field and pray nothing from behind comes up.
Juglall executed the simple plan to a tee. Favourite Alibi (Vlad Duric) was in an ideal spot, but with the cheap sectionals White Hunter was getting away with upfront, his task was already made more arduous.
As soon as Juglall went flat to the boards, White Hunter kicked clear with Alibi the only one who came within whiffing distance, but one and a quarter length still held them apart at the line.
Such was the superiority of the first two that Twickenham (Amirul Ismadi), the next best, finished another gap of 4 ¾ lengths away. The winning time was 1min 22.09secs for the 1400m on the Short Course.
Juglall was obviously delighted a last-minute ride had bumped up his score to 29 wins for the year, but more because it has maintained a 100% strike rate with Peters, a trainer who seldom uses him.
“I won on James’ first winner Olympic Anthem, and I think I was also back from injury, and that would be the second ride and it’s also a winner!” said Juglall.
“Hopefully, James will give me a few more rides from now on. A big thank you to him for tonight’s ride and also to Corey for telling me how to ride this horse.
“He’s a lovely horse. I remember I saw him at his last start winning with a lot in hand.
“I just had to keep him going once he was in front. He dictated and scored a gutsy race in the end.
“At the 200m, I still had a lot of horse under me and I knew it would take a very good horse to beat me.”
Peters said White Hunter had improved by leaps and bounds since his days as a Class 4 galloper, which dates back to only last June, but was still coy about aiming too high for the Fastnet Rock five-year-old at this stage.
“Frontrunning tactics suit this horse. He likes to dictate and do his own things in front,” said the Englishman.
“He’s a funny kind of horse who doesn’t like to be disturbed when he is upfront. He likes to be by himself and then only he will kick away.
“He’s taken a while to acclimatise but he’s really thriving now. He showed a nice turn of foot up the straight and he’s definitely a horse on the up.
“I suppose I could start looking at a race like the EW Barker Trophy, but not too long ago, he was only a Class 4 horse. I won’t think too far ahead for him, just take it one step at a time.”
The Group 2 EW Barker Trophy is a handicap race that is run over Friday night’s race distance of 1400m.
Raced by the Galileo Stable, White Hunter has now taken his handy record to four wins and five placings from 14 starts for stakes earnings edging close to the $200,000 mark.
