The 2022 champion reinsman, Dane Dawkins, had the first of four winners on the day in D’Storm (6-5), trained by Patrick Lynch.
A former jockey, Lynch was saddling winner number 499 in his two-decade-plus career of conditioning horses.
The little dark bay maiden filly won with authority, beating the nearest of her eight rivals by six and a half lengths over the five and a half furlongs of the opening event.
Raddesh Roman, the 2024 and 2025 designate, secured the first of a riding double. This, aboard game and consistent four-year-old Oil Machine (5-2), a progeny of Bern Identity saddled by jockey-turned-trainer Phillip Elliot, to win the seven and a half furlong second event by a length and a half.
A measure of the rate at which the horse population is declining is that, here, in mid-September, race three was only the third event for juveniles this season.
Run over the four-furlong straight course, debutant God’s Plan (4-5), schooled by Gary Subratie for the first of a stable double, did nothing wrong in scoring gamely by a neck for Dawkins’ revisit of the winners’ enclosure to celebrate his second winner.
In race four, restricted to three-year-old maidens, Ian Alexander’s fifteenth starter of the season, She Is My Dream, partnered by claimer Evertte Clunis, was a one-length winner of the five-and-a-half furlongs gallop.
Race five was another example of the thousands of farcical money-losing races presented for wagering over the 33 years of the claiming system, with 1-2 bet Propellant (USA) winning by 15½ lengths for Dawkins’ third and Subratie’s second success.
Trainer Vincent Atkinson posted speedy six-year-old grey mare Bestdaughterinlaw (5-2) in unbeatable condition for race six. She led and scored by four lengths in race six, run at five furlongs straight with claimer Anthony Allen at the reins.
Then, in keeping with the prevailing status quo of champion on the ten-race card, 2011 titlist Dick Cardenas, drove Robert Pearson’s Mighty Gully (9-5) to victory in race seven. The margin of victory here was a short head at the end of the five-and-a-half-furlong trip and a painful delay for Dawkins’ supporters as they were forced to wait another two hours for his fourth success.
Ability (8-5), nominated and declared by Fitzgerald Richards with claimer Emelio McLean on the paperwork, led at the end of a furlong and a half and remained clear over the seven furlongs of race eight, scoring by five and a half lengths. Ability, the 2022 Derby winner, is one of the most successful local thoroughbreds of all time. The five-year-old bay horse is difficult to train but has bankrolled over $13.2 million in stakes from only 19 starts.
The seven-furlong Open Allowance Thunderbird Trophy, contested over seven furlongs and featured as race eight, went to Supernatural Power (USA). The three-year-old grey filly, schooled by Philip Feanny, was ridden by Roman to close his double and won by just over four lengths at odds of 4-5 for her fifth success from seven appearances.
Dawkins sealed his four-timer in the nightcap as Mark My Identity (3-5) entered by Byron Davis, was a length and a half ahead at the end of the seven-furlong exertion.
