Trevor's terrific treble

Democracy (P Trevor up) winning the Hyderabad Race Club Trophy at Mahalaxmi on Friday (Pic: RWITC)

Jockey P Trevor excelled on Friday at the Mahalaxmi racetrack when he won not only the day's feature event, the Hyderabad Race Club Trophy (astride Democracy), but also rode his other two mounts to victory, accomplishing a cent percent strike rate for the day.

The Pesi Shroff-trained Democracy put up a scintillating show. Lying last of five as Cellini (V Bunde up) worked up a runaway lead by cutting blazing fractions, Trevor alerted Democracy to task after turning for home, and the four-year-old filly moved up magnificently to cover almost a dozen lengths, before sweeping past the field for an easy victory.

Trevor had earlier ridden another facile winner for Shroff when Constable decisively won the Behram A Engineer Salver despite a compromised start caused by the fall of Esperanza (P Vinod up) which nearly put Constable out of the race. Not losing heart, Trevor got Constable going, and galvanized the colt into action opposite the stands in such spectacular style, his class III rivals didn't know what whizzed past them.

Trevor's first win on the Friday card was scored on Fourth Wing in the Topspin Plate for two-year-old maiden horses. The Aman Hussain -trained Sanus Per Aquam - Centrestage filly making debut hit the front soon after the start and decisively beat the hot favourite, Among The Stars, trained by Malesh Narredu who, incidentally, managed to open his account for the season immediately in the next race when apprentice rider A Waydande won the lower division of the World's Oldest Barbershop Trophy astride Quicker. Interestingly, the other division of the same race was also won by another apprentice rider, Siddharth, who steered trainer Shazaan Shah's filly Credence first past the wire.

The day opened to a dream finish for the official handicapper whose job is to assign a handicap (weight) to each runner in such a way that every horse, theoretically, finishes in a dead-heat at the wire. Well, not all but three of the six horses in the Samuel Nathan Plate--Red Dust (6/1), Daianne (first favourite at 16/10) and her stable-mate Swarovski (25/1)--went past the winning post "locked" together. The photo finish camera revealed jockey Amyn Merchant astride the first-named having finished a short head ahead of Swarovski (Bharat Singh up) who was ahead of Daianne (Bhavani Singh up) by the same margin. Trainer Faisal Abbas saddled the winner.

Jockey S Zervaan, who returned to the saddle after a longish gap, scored with his first ride of the season. He drove the Narendra Lagad-trained Daulat Mai to win the last race of the day, the DW Reid Plate.