Star Princess shines bright in
G.S. Poonawalla Million

By Usman Rangila
April 10, 2005

The Cooji Katrak saddled Star Princess gave a truly bright performance to humiliate favourite Evatina in the Gool S. Poonawalla Million, the final plum for juveniles this season. The chestnut daughter of Placerville out of Prudent Princess was second in demand to Evatina, who had the best credentials and form to win the race. The Dallas Todywalla trained Evatina did command some dedicated support from the followers of form but the Mark Gallagher ridden filly was unable to reproduce the brilliance she had exhibited earlier against the likes of Fedora and Hesperus. Coming back to the sizzling performance of the winner, Star Princess showed a remarkable turnaround in her talent if her last two runs are taken into consideration. C. Rajendra rode Star Princess with supreme confidence and Evatina was reduced to a spectator when the former cruised past her opposite the grand stand. Sea Spray ran below par and it was the challenger from Calcutta, Romantic Liaison who ran on to take the third berth ahead of Agha.

Cooji completed a back-to-back double when Star Galaxy (Placerville-Riaza) made mincemeat of her rivals after the withdrawal of favourite Hugo. Rosenkavalier took some time getting into his stride but it was too late as Star Galaxy with P. Kamlesh in saddle, was home and dry by then. Star Millionaire came with a long stretch run to finish third ahead of Matinee Star after Premier Galaxy faded out from contention.

Imtiaz Sait nurtured Starscape let down a large following and surprisingly ran a listless race which allowed Great Opinion, who was least in demand in the four-horse field, to claim the Indian Navy Trophy. Great Opinion, originally trained by Mansoor Shah but now in the care of S. N. Joshi, was backed down from 15 to 1 to 4 to 1 in his earlier appearance but ended a poor last behind the eventual winner Starscape. It was hard to tell whether conceding weight to Great Opinion proved to be an onerous task for Starscape. As for Arcadius and Happy Queen, the former was short on aggression in the closing stages while the latter seemed happy to see her stable-partner hog the limelight. Joshi had saddled a winner right at the start of the day when Peronda (Dark Nile-City Queen) ran true to form and received able assistance from Amyn Merchant in the saddle. Royal Aristocrat’s late dash denied Handsome Lad the runner-up slot whilst So Precious having to manoeuvre her way through a maze of runners to end fourth.

C. Rajendra moved a step closer to the leading jockey of the season title as he partnered two more winners apart from Star Princess. Rajendra piloted Nana Raghunath’s protégé Alice Wonder (Mischevious Music-Enola Gay) to a comfortable win over Highland Path and Lady Hamilton after Aerobic’s called the early shots. Rajendra replaced C. Alford astride Imtiaz Sait’s candidate Romantic Hero (Placerville-Romantic Feelings) in the Royal Calcutta Turf Club Trophy and the recent acquisition of Deepak Khaitan was finely tuned to frustrate the favourite Secret Warrior.

Nana sent out one more winner for owner Gracias Saldhana in the form of Game of Power (Diffident-Grand It Is). The grey gelding quelled the resistance of Soviet Fire to register an encore in the hands of R. Rupesh. Soviet Fire lost second place to Teaser after the latter’s jockey raised an objection against him.

Ocean of Angels, who had a grand rehearsal in his only outing this season, was by far the most impressive winner of the day. The Hormuz Antia saddled bay son of Alnasr Alwasheek out of L’lle Mysterieuse lay in mid-bunch till the turn and literally flew when Pradeep Chouhan put him into top gear. Ocean of Angels was simply unstoppable after he had the measure of Liesl in the home stretch. Gold Star, the pre-race favourite, was never sighted.