Second-generation trainer Ryan Darby’s good form in the last quarter of 2020 continued into the early 2021 season as Top Shelf (Omar walker), whom he acquired on the January 16, won the opening event for the hard-working conditioner to enjoy this year’s fourth trip to the winners’ enclosure with excellent prospects for a second on the card. This was the beginning of a series of common features in seven of the day’s races.
Trainer Lorne “Georgie” Kirlew also a second-generation trainer, who should be getting far more opportunities to condition horses, won the second event with Subbie (Javaniel Patterson), having claimed the seven-year-old horse in August of last year and under his care has now won two races from the last six starts.
In race three, Robert son of the late Anthony Pearson, also a second-generation conditioner, continued his good start to this season as well winning his fourth race this year as fairly progressive sprinter Princess Lauren who led and ran well inside the last 200 metres to score by just over one length.
Howard, from the great family of Hall of Fame breeder Henry W Jaghai, kept the trend going as Striking Lady (Anthony Thomas) won the fourth narrowly from US-bred five-year-old debutant Stormy Silana ridden by Dane Nelson in the event restricted to fillies and mares.
Ryan Darby returned to the hallowed spaced reserved for winners when favourite Zi Beast (Roger Hewitt) led and was always clear in the fifth. Incredibly the second-generation success was extended to the sixth when Michael Marlowe saddled In The Blood to give Dick Cardenas his first of two wins on the day.
The success of the sons of dedicated horsemen was interrupted in the seventh with Cardenas closing his double on the Patrick Lynch-conditioned Executive Chief.
A resumption of the strangely curious phenomenon was inevitable when Ian, son of the late trainer Harry Parsard, posted Classic aspirant She’s A Wonder (Dane Dawkins) to impress with a front-running near four-length victory margin in the day’s eighth event.
There was another interruption in the day’s pattern of success for the horsemen’s sons when King’s Magician, ridden by Linton Steadman in the absence of previously declared Ian Spence, duly justified odds-on favouritism in the afternoon’s ninth event. This cleared the way for Anthony Nunes, whose late dad Nigel was also a champion, to saddle Legality in the nightcap thus giving Dane Nelson his second the winner on the card and closing out the extra ordinary sequence of events.
The Training Feat Award is presented to Ryan Darby for the performance of Top Shelf, who is deserving of the Best Winning Gallop for reversing the third-place finish with two of her rivals in a more competitive field while Omar Walker is deserving of the Jockeyship Award for yet another copybook ride aboard the mare.
