Lying last until turning for home, Thalassa moved up with giant strides in the homestretch to impressively sweep past all her rivals
Representational Image (Pic: AFP)
Despite her fourth place in the HPSL Indian Derby (Gr 1) in the last start, the market (read bookmakers who set the odds) refused to give any respect to Thalassa, sending her ante-post odds of 7/10 to shoot beyond 9/4, but got their fingers burnt badly in the process as the four-year-old filly trained by Faisal Abbas moved up dramatically in the hands of jockey A Sandesh to ridicule her class II rivals.
ADVERTISEMENT
Later on the card Sandesh powered another Faisal Abbas ward, Cinderella's Dream, to a thrilling photo finish victory in the lower division of the Racing Officials Trophy, beating apprentice jockey Aditya Waydande who gave an equally inspired ride to Ocean. However, the rookie Waydande made amends immediately in the next race, the Trainers Trophy, when he brought longshot Rambler from the rear with a sustained run to decisively beat Earth (Bharat Singh up) who was shaping up like a winner close home.
Jockey Sandesh later created a flutter in the Jockey's Trophy when he took the 5-to-1 Sands Of Dubai on a start-to-finish mission, opened up a useful gap of four lengths and tried to steal the race, but jockey A Prakash, astride the Pesi Shroff-trained Eagle Day, alerted the piping-hot, on-money favourite to the task, who soon drew alongside the runaway leader, toyed with him for a couple of strides, and then sailed away for a comfortable victory.
In the final furlong of the Dadi Adenwalla Trophy (Div II) for maiden 3y old horses, both the favourite Don Julio (Haridas Gore up) and the second-in-demand Zephyr (Yash Narredu up) fought a stirring duel all the way up to the wire. The photo finish image got resolved in favour of Zephyr, trained by Malesh Narredu. The other division of the same race was bagged by the Dallas Todywalla-trained Diligence who made every post of the five-furlong trip a winning one. Diligence was ridden by P Trevor, who went on to emerge as the most successful professional on the Sunday card with a grand treble. After Diligence, Trevor won the upper division of the Trainers Trophy with the well-supported Manor House trained by Aman Hussain, before wrapping up the last race of the day, the Sion F Nessim Plate, with the Subhag Singh-trained Marlboro Man who was backed to the exclusion of all his rivals.
The racing journalists Trophy was won by Adonis trained by V Kasbekar. Jockey K Nazil kept Adonis focused on the task even as the favourite Arbitrage (S Siddharth up) covered more than four lengths in the homestretch but only managed to get to the hindquarters of the winner.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
