Kiss Your Song was facing a stiffer task in his bold three-in-a-row bid on Friday night, but his tenacious will to win saw him pull off the feat by the barest of margins.
A winner at his last two runs in inferior company, the Your Song four-year-old was rising in grade in the $80,000 Class 3 race over 1100m, and more ominously, was rising against hot favourite Nowyousee.
The Lee Freedman-trained hotpot ($11) seemed to have the race in his keeping for most of the way after Daniel Moor had half the battle won in securing the lead from his wide alley (12).
But Kiss Your Song ($28), who jumped from even further out (13), had not left him an inch throughout, shaping up as his biggest threat as he came testing him upon straightening.
Surprisingly, as Kiss Your Song was propelled forward under jockey Matthew Kellady’s strong drive, Nowyousee retreated rather meekly on the railside. The hat-trick of wins would after all not be so hard to clinch, thought Kiss Your Song’s backers.
But that was underestimating Nowyousee, who is well-known to be the sort who gets spurred on when a sparring partner comes along. Smelling a dogfight, the O’Reilly four-year-old pricked his ears back up.
A battle royale unfolded inside the last 200m with neither galloper yielding an inch. The pair ran locked together all the way to the line, with not many willing to hazard a guess who got the bob, so close was the razor-sharp margin.
The slow-mo and eventually the judge’s photo, however, showed that Kiss Your Song had prevailed by a nose from Nowyousee. Lord Of Cloud (Troy See) rattled home late to run third another 1 ¾ lengths away. The winning time was 1min 5.66secs for the 1100m on the Polytrack.
“I’ve always thought highly of this horse, but he’s just had a lot of bad luck. I thought he was on his way out at some stage,” said Baertschiger.
“He’s had a long campaign with like 10 to 11 runs, but he’s such a tough bugger. The second horse tonight is a very handy horse, and that’s why my bloke was ridden closer to the pace tonight.
“Normally, he’s ridden a bit quieter, but Matty tracked the favourite throughout, and they got the bob on him.”
Kellady, who rode Kiss Your Song three times without success before, was beaming as he weighed back in. He knew that Kiss Your Song should normally be John Powell’s ride given the heavyweight Australian jockey was on top at his last two wins, but when the weights came out, 53.5kgs meant he would more likely get the call-up.
With the Malaysian jockey snapping a mini run of outs since his last win on Galileo’s Approach (No 10) on June 3, the buoyant mood saw him enjoying a spot of banter “playing up” his role in the win.
“He’s not an easy horse to ride. He can be a hard-going horse, but luckily, I’ve got good hands!” he quipped.
“Nah, just joking! But seriously, Shane has done a good job with this horse to make him win three in a row.
“He’s normally in fourth or fifth, but my plan was to stay closer to the favourite throughout. He was the horse to beat and I didn’t want him to slip away from us.
“It was a good fight all the way, and I’m glad the photo went our way.”
With that third success, Kiss Your Song has now taken his stakes earnings close to the $220,000 mark for the Bingo Stable.
