After landing Sunday’s big prize, jockey Vlad Duric went on to bag a race-to-race double with Splinter straight afterwards.
Singapore’s current leading jockey had one race earlier snared the Korea Racing Authority Trophy (1200m) with Distinctive Darci for Mark Walker.
While Duric had to dig deep into his bag of tricks to extricate himself from a sticky situation in the annual race between the Singapore Turf Club and the KRA (see earlier report), the win aboard the Bruce Marsh-trained Splinter was more of a breeze.
Even though they dropped back at the rear three wide, they always had cover while favourite Speedy Phoenix (Manoel Nunes) looked to be doing overtime in his endeavours to take a forward spot outside Bellus Wonder (John Sundradas), with his mouth wide open and pulling his rider off track as the pace went on without abating.
In the meantime, Duric must have been chuckling to himself as he slipped some reins to Splinter, who instantly improved from the back to be within striking distance upon straighetening up.
Speaking of striking, Duric, a well-known strong whip rider, had not touched Splinter ($15) yet at that stage. Under hands and heels riding, he drove his mount to the front from the weakening Speedy Phoenix, and only gave five slaps of the persuader, just to make sure he keeps his mind on the job with the race all but sewn up at the 200m.
Elite Warrior (Shafiq Rizuan) fleetingly looked a threat, but went backwards to run fourth while New Zealand import Bao Shan Magic (Zawari Razali) and Delfyne (Saifudin Ismail) were the only two who tried to rattle the winner, but without much success.
In the end, the Dream Ahead three-year-old romped in by more than three lengths from Bao Shan Magic with Delfyne third another half-a-length away. The winning time was 1min 4.51secs for the 1100m on the Polytrack.
“I think he runs better over this kind of trip. They had tinkered with his gear a little and he’s finally come right today,” said Duric.
“He was wide but he settled well behind horses and he finished off very well. It was a big impressive win.
“Before his run, everything had been coming right and I was just hoping he would put his best foot forward today – and he did.”
Splinter has now taken his record to two wins and three seconds from nine outings for prizemoney fast approaching the $120,000 mark for the Sunday Sun Stable headed by a member of one of South Africa’s most famous racing families, Guy Shirtliff.
