Cruz shows rivals a clean pair of heels
There was no group one race to be decided on yesterday's card but leading trainer Tony Cruz was still in group one mode, claiming two more races from just seven starters and further stretched his premiership lead.
After 49 meetings, Cruz has now prepared 58 winners from 283 runners at a strike rate of 20.5 per cent. It's been a dominating performance and if his rivals were hoping that a week of media pressure might have put the premiership pacesetter off his game, they were back to the tactical drawing board over a pint last night.
Cruz started off the day in the second race with Sheriff Bamboo ($29 favourite), who capitalised on a polished Felix Coetzee ride to gain a neck verdict over Opera Magic in the class four event (1,200 metres) on the all-weather track.
'This horse hasn't been the most straight forward to deal with,' Cruz said. 'He had a mind of his own and used to get very nervous in the paddock before a race.
'This year, with a bit more maturity, he's become a lot stronger. We've also won the battle with him, temperament wise, and he's now an entirely different horse to deal with.'
The C-Team put it all together again later in the programme with French import Nilometer, a son of the highly bred Mr Prospector sire Machiavellian, who incidentally is a close relation to the great Danehill.
Nilometer had been working well for a long time but frustrated Cruz and Coetzee with his slow getaways and non performance on race days. The neat bay turned it all around with a win at the January 23 meeting and has now put two wins back-to-back.
One of the members of the Perfect Ten Syndicate, which races Nilometer, is Lyraa Ng Yin-mui, who is also the owner of last week's group one Centenary Sprint Trophy placegetter, Multidandy.
'Yes, the owners have had to be patient but I must thank Tony for his patience too,' Ng said.
'With all the demand from so many owners for Tony to train their horses, it was so good of him to persist for so long with Nilometer. It must have been frustrating, knowing this horse was good but not showing it on race day. But now he's got it all together and today's win was a great thrill.'
Cruz said he'd been 'pretty confident' that Nilometer would make it back-to-back wins.
'He's always been showing us he had the required ability, but once he broke through, it was a relief,' he said. 'But since that win, I thought he had improved even further. There didn't look to be too much pace in this race, so I thought he'd be right on the speed and very hard to beat. Felix did the rest.'
The Cruz double was two-thirds of a winning treble for the South African master, who shared the day's riding honours with compatriot Douglas Whyte.
Coetzee's middle pin winner was Happy Contender for Alex Wong Yu-on in the fifth, a class four over 2,200m.
Once again, Coetzee's rare ability to rate horses came into play as Happy Contender, who had been winless in 22 previous starts, overcame a wide passage to win the low-grade marathon in fast time.
The treble took Coetzee's tally for the season to 54, just 10 behind his personal-best season, established last year when he was also doing the majority of the riding for the Cruz yard.
