 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2003
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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Roman Gladiator had something to crow about after winning the Ferrymead Restaurant & Bars NZ Welcome stakes.
This was the race he should not have won. Because not only did he give hot favourite Lennon a start and a beating, he did it with a flat tyre wrapped round the rim. After starting from the second line, behind Bull Run, he improved three-wide down the back, hauling the damaged wheel that had been affected from as far out as the 1400m peg. Lennon lost ground on the corner, while he was trailing his stablmate Classy Cullen, and then sorted himself out to rally strongly in the straight. And just when it appeared he had done enough to win, Roman Gladiator came with a woosh down the outside to take it by a neck.
Roman Gladiator is raced by Amanda Swain and Marie Neil, of Sydney. They bought the Christian Cullen-Assisi yearling colt for $19,000, when they really shouldn't have done so at all. "Marie wanted us to buy a filly, so her husband Peter could race and then breed from it," said Robin Swain, Amanda's husband and Knapdale co-trainer of the 3-year-old with Colin Baynes. "I don't exactly know why we finished up buying a colt, except that I thought he had a head just like his father's. He had a wee curb at the back, but I knew that wouldn't worry him. I suppose I just liked the look of him," he said. For his education, Swain put Roman Gladiator in the cart most days and has seen him improve each time he's been in.
He was driven in the Welcome by Colin De Filippi, who will continue to care for him now that the owners have decided to make the late payment for the Sires' Stakes Series. He has a heat for that at Forbury Park on Thursday, and another week or so later at Addington. "It is not often we race 2-year-olds," said Swain, "and if we do it's usually in our home area. Country Ways was one we could have, but he hurt a stifle at that age," he said. Swain and Baynes have 10 in work, including By The Left, a 3-year-old by Fake Left that Swain maintains will go right through the grades. "I was hoping there would have been a race for him on the last night of the meeting up here, and I think he would have won it," he said.
De Filippi has already given the horse a stamp of quality. In a quick reflection immediately after the race, he said: "He could be the second-best 2-year-old I have driven, after Courage Under Fire."
Roman Gladiator is the eigth foal fron Assisi, the winner of 11 races including the Leonard Memorial at two. Her first foal was the good performer, Chiavari. Roman Gladiator was bred by Stephen Shanks and Maurice Scown.
Credit: Mike Grainger writing in HRWeekly 16Apr03