Classa For Ever puts Great Win in shade

Leading trainer David Hayes was left speechless as he failed to throw off his Juvenile Sprint Trophy hoodoo with the shock defeat of boom sprinter Great Win yesterday while jockey Craig Williams took advantage of a rare mount for Peter Ho to finish the season as he began it.

Williams won the first feature of the season, the Chief Executive's Cup on Cheerful Fortune, and took the Juvenile Sprint yesterday on Ho-trained Classa For Ever at his final feature race ride for the term.

But the big news out of the race was the rank failure of Great Win (Gerald Mosse), who had been the standout youngster of the season but beat only one runner to the post yesterday after starting at almost unbackable odds of $12 for every $10. His backers were never happy after the two-year-old missed the start and settled at the rear. Although he worked into the picture in the middle stages, he was never a genuine threat.

'I'm in a state of shock,' said Hayes, who had earmarked the Hong Kong Sprint in December as Great Win's goal this year. 'I don't know if he's hurt himself or what has happened. We'll know more when he cools down tomorrow, but Gerald said the horse didn't feel like himself in the straight.'

Mosse told the stewards that the intention had been to ride Great Win forward as is usual but he changed plans after missing the start, believing that to chase the leaders then would have been detrimental to the colt's chances.

'Perhaps Great Win resented being off the pace after he missed the jump - it's the first time he's been in behind,' Hayes said, scratching for an answer. 'Perhaps the track surface was against him - it's reached that stage of the season where the surface has been well-used, it gets a bit shifty and some horses don't handle that.'

If there was anything for Hayes to take away it was that the race has not been a good one for him in the past, but defeat in the Juvenile Sprint hasn't stopped horses like All Thrills Too and Charming City going on to be the Group One horses he expected them to be.