Samuel asked Oyster Cove
for his effort and the bay gelding galloped with gay abandon to be a
comfortable length clear of runner-up Stara Zagora. The latter rallied far too late to put the triumphant march of Oyster Cove in peril.
The flared nostrils of Adam’s Star ensured Bezan Chenoy’s candidate a slot ahead of Spectacular Quest. Unlike his previous run Secret Warrior struggled to keep pace with the field and Algeciras too suffered the same fate after failing to find room to
manoeuvre in the early stages of the race.
If the 1000 Guineas winner Desert Lightning is invited to Bangalore for the Invitation Cup weekend, the filly and Oyster Cove may cap their master’s year-long toil by fetching some laurels, which he surely deserves.
Samuel had a relatively easy ride atop Dallas Todywalla trained maiden filly Pretty Ballerina (Inner City–Pretty Eyes) at the start of the proceedings in the afternoon. The property of Dr.M.A.M.Ramaswamy allowed Queen Ruby the luxury of calling the early shots but swooped on her as the seven-horse field neared the final turn. Queen Ruby surrendered without any resistance and it was Éclair Blanche who tried to put up a fight.
Cyrille Stefan shrugged off Vanilla Sky’s attempt to hit the front and took Altaf Hussain trained Suleman Pasha (Alnasr Alwasheek–Azzilfi) on a successful start-to-finish mission. The participation of Suleman Pasha’s so-called rivals was limited to giving a meaningless chase. Ganador finished on powerfully
to take second ahead of Firey Future and Realism. Last-outing winner Annunciation seemed to have saved his best for some other day.
Celestrella (Burden of Proof–Divine Dreams) carried on from where Suleman Pasha had left and made every post of the Y.M.Chaudhary Memorial Trophy a winning one.
Mallesh Narredu had the race well under his control right from the word go and won untroubled almost all the way home. Gruezi languished in the mid-bunch with Samuel in saddle and ran on only when the race was in the safe-keeping of Pesi Shroff’s candidate. Favourite Golden Circle was in the vanguard till the last two furlongs but retired without even a whimper.
The agonising wait of Sixty Seconds to earn a bracket ended when Kolkata-based C. Alford steered the Arti Doctor saddled gelding to a convincing win over Savoy and Tarragona. Aracaju was best of the beaten lot. The chestnut son of Storm Trooper was sluggish at the start but came with a
long-stretch run to figure on the judges board. Acerenzza, entrusted to rookie Vijay Kadam by Pesi Shroff, was in charge of the running at the turn but had used much of her energy by travelling on the centre of the track to make any material difference to the outcome of the race. This being his first contest after a gap of two months
Convenience thought it fit to utilise it for an airing.
Trainer Narendra Lagad was quick to realise that Light of Justice needed a shorter trip after the seven-year-old gelding returned empty-handed twice over a nine-furlong trip. More importantly, the last two attempts of Light of Justice forced the bookies to loosen their purse strings and offer lucrative odds.
Lagad did not let this opportunity go waste. Satish Nayak astride Light of Justice seized the initiative at the top of the bend and established a winning lead at that stage itself. Zeus laboured hard to finish second and was followed by Perfect Peace and Rage of Angels. Imtiaz Sait saddled Spade of Ace (Warrshan–Peperoni), a failed favourite in his previous outing, was hard-ridden in the concluding race by C. Rajendra to ward off Verzzano and Silver Tulip. Well Versed with Niall McCullagh in saddle was never sighted in the fight. Viceroy found enthusiastic support in the betting but couldn’t deliver the goods. He was not disgraced when ending a close fifth.
