Baby Bazooka wins Madras Race Club Trophy

Shrugs off slow jump at the start to win at Mahalaxmi

Baby Bazooka, the seven-year-old mare trained by Altamash, bagged the Madras Race Club Trophy, the feature event of Thursday's six-race card slated at the Mahalaxmi racetrack. Recently in the habit of jumping slowly from the starting gates, Baby Bazooka showed some improvement when she lost only a fraction of a second at jump, before Sandesh brushed her up to stalk the leader, Son Of A Gun (M Alam up), with Irish Gold (S Saqlain up) and Dexa (P Trevor up) following them. When the race came to a boil midway in the straight, all three--Baby Bazooka, Irish Gold and Dexa--got aligned for a neck-and-neck battle, Irish Gold overpowered Baby Bazooka. But Sandesh managed to cajole Baby Bazooka for a re-run and she responded magnificently to wrest back the initiative.

Sandesh also steered Timeless Vision to a last-stride victory in the RR Byramji Salver, beating favourite Jade (C Umesh up) who shaped like a winner after sweeping past the front runners in the final lap of the six-furlong trip. Timeless Vision was saddled by Adhirajsingh.

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English jockey David Allan who has arrived in India for the 2024-25 racing season got off to a flying start when he powered trainer Karthik's 8-to-1 shot Caliph to a fluent victory in the Vallabhdas H Adwalia Trophy, a mile affair for Class IV horses. The Greater Mumbai Police Trophy was claimed by Midnight Express (NS Parmar up) who justified her favourite status by easily outpacing her nine rivals over the five-furlong sprint for Class IV runners.

The six-race card began with Dr AH Sayed Plate for Class V runners (5y & older) over six furlongs in which jockey KG Likhit Appu, who was fishing for his first success at Mahalaxmi after shifting base from Bangalore this season, gave a well-judged ride to the Imtiaz Sait-trained Milli who spared three parts of a length to She's A Teaser (Bhavani Singh up) at the wire.

A massive coup was confidently pulled off by trainer Hormuz Antia in the last race of the day, the Raza Ali Plate for Class V runners, when truckloads of money landed onto his ward Hagibis, whose last victory was at the identical class level (Class V, 5y&o, race#56 run on January 4 last year), and who, since then, had used the nine intervening runs in Class IV to drop from the rating of 33 to 20 at which he ran on Thursday.

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