 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2003
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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| Pullover Brown & Anthony Butt |
The 2003 Wayne Francis Memorial NZ Oaks will be remembered for more reasons than the win by Pullover Brown. Foremost will be the dramatic failure of the hot favourite Champagne Princess. Next will be the astonishingly quick time Pullover Brown took to win the race; her 3:11.8 clipping more than a second off the New Zealand record of 3:13 held by Elect To Live.
Add to that the fact Geoff Small had four of the 14 starters in the race; Alta Serena was relegated from third for causing interference to Unrehearsed and Lady Toddy; Anthony Butt continued to bag May's biggies, and Mayor Heather set the race alight when driver Jo Herbert refused the chance of a trail behind Champagne Princess. This was where the race director gave up and left the players to run it themselves.
Jack Smolenski had worked Champagne Princess smoothly through the pack, and after 600 metres only Mayor Heather stood between a hard run in the open and a controlling one in front. As to be expected, Smolenski pressed on. But he was soon surprised, then alarmed, to find that Herbert was not thinking the way Smolenski thought she should have. When he got to the mile peg, after running hard for 400 metres, Smolenski took hold of Champagne Princess, giving the impression of dropping into the trail while there was still time to do so. But this was not an option Smolenski considered. "I didn't know much about the other horse, except it was trained somewhere in the North Island, and I didn't want to run the risk of getting in there," he said. Champagne Princess sat parked, where she pulled hard.
Butt was head of the chasing pack, and he settled Pullover Brown behind Mayor Heather until moving off the marker line at the 500 metres. Champagne Princess was disappearing quicker than a dropped stone on the corner, where Alta Serena was causing trouble to Unrehearsed and consequent interference to one or two others. Mayor Heather also left the stage pretty quickly in the straight, and that's where Pullover Brown pulled away to win by more than two lengths.
While it was all going Pullover Brown's way, the running of the race was not entirely favourable to her stablemate Classical. Going the speed they were meant late gaps and spaces for the back runners, and Classical and Coburg both came generously into the finish in this manner. Classical was four-deep on the markers, and cut a healthy chunk out of Pullover Brown's margin inside the final 200 metres.
Pullover Brown is raced by a syndicate of five headed by Chris McLeod, who had not been to Addington before, nor Chrischurch for that matter. With a group of friends, he leased Dinavinetto from Steve and Anne Phillips, and raced her for a win and six placings from 43 starts out of the Shane Hayes stable. She was then returned to the Phillips for breeding, who put her in foal to Armbro Operative. "I was actually quite taken with Dinavinetto, and then I spotted a weanling filly by Armbro Operative being offered at an all age sale up here," said Mcleod. "We bought her for $2,500. We didn't have a trainer for her, but I had my eye on Geoff Small because I knew he was so good with young horses. I just phoned him, but he didn't know me," he said.
Anne had originally bought Dinavinetto, by Fitch II from the Mercedes mare Precious Dina, at Ted Hooper's Dispersal Sale, and they still have her but perhaps not for long. "We have an Iraklis filly and one by D M Dilinger from the mare, so we have the breed. We have offered Dinavinetto, in foal to Armbro Operative, to the syndicate, so she's there if they want her," she said. Phillips was in Christchurch for the week, caring for her father Des Grice who has been in ill-health, and extended her stay when Pullover Brown made the field for the Oaks.
Along with Operation Dynamite and Armbro Innocence, Pullover Brown has carried the banner for Armbro Operative, which is good news for buyers who were able to buy his stock at deflated prices at the recent PGG yearling sales.
Small, who has made a meal of winning big races at Addington over the last 12 months - with Elsu and Classical - said that he believed that the Armbro Operatives had a preference to sitting on the pace. "Most of the Armbro Operatives I've seen seem to like it that way," he said.
Credit: Mike Grainger writing in NZHR Weekly