 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2005
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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| Mainland Banner & Ricky May head for the judge |
When Foreal drew two and Mainland Banner landed 15, the odds seemed very much in the former's favour. But with the horse drawing inside Foreal being an emergency for the event, her automatic scratching moved Foreal into one and changed the whole complexion of the race. Driver Anthony Butt no longer had options, needing to secure the lead no matter what to avoid him and Foreal getting buried back on the fence. And he had three goes at it too...firstly at the start when Robyn Blue matched them for early speed, once again soon afterwards after that rival had crossed them, and a third time down the back straight when he pulled out of the trail behind Nick Off Holme. The latter had zipped around with purpose just before the bell and been allowed to go to the front, but the damage to Foreal had been done by then; a lead time of 1:13, Mainland Banner sitting back in the pack having not spent a penny, surely it was only a matter of time before she pounced.
Back where he and Mainland Banner were sitting, Ricky May knew that part of the plan was working - but some parts of it weren't, either. He'd thought two or three times about moving but nothing pulled out to give Mainland Banner cover on the way round, so in the end he hooked out starting the last lap and got stuck behind a runner that was sitting three-wide and going no-where. Playing the waiting game as long as he could, May finally decided it was time to go wider passing the 600m mark, and with a slap of the reins Mainland Banner inched forward. Rounding the turn she was fair travelling, and in the twinkling of an eye she simply changed down a gear and zoomed away. Molly Darling burst out of the pack to get within a length and a quarter, but nothing was going to deny Mainland Banner her moment and she stopped the clock in a breathtaking 1:58.8 mile rate.
She might float like a butterfly, but she certainly stings like a bee. Afterwards, May could do little more than shake his head. "She just did that herself," he said. "She had absolutely no favours out there tonight; I knew by the time we settled down we were going to be twenty lengths off them, and we were. But she's such a stunning filly - she's just so good that anyone could drive her." May then went on to say things that no-one thought they'd hear any driver admit... "She feels better than her father, and I know that's a big call. But she feels better-gaited than Christian Cullen, because he used to go a bit rough at times. She wears a sixty-three inch hopple, no shorteners and no knee boots... she's just the most nicely-gaited horse you could ever drive. And that run won't knock her either. If anything she'll come back better next week."
'Next week' is this Friday night's $100,000 Nevele R Fillies' Final, and after such a performance Mainland Banner will be all the rage to extend her unbeaten streak to eight.
There in the background, as he was throughout the night last week, will be former owner Ian Sowden. Sowden is the Ashburton horseman who purchased Mainland Banner off Dennis and Dianne Moore at the Premier Yearling Sale before on-selling her to Ian Dobson 21 months later. And even though he no longer owns the vehicle, he's never stopped enjoying the ride. "She's still a part of me," he said. "I've never missed being on-course when she races, and I spent all night down at the box with her tonight. I remember when she won at Invercargill, they had to come and find me to get her to pass urine. They'd been trying for over an hour, but after I got there she did it within a couple of minutes. No, I'm just getting a hell of a kick out of seeing her race."
Sowden says despite the fact that he sold Mainland Banner last November, he "could write a book" about the filly. The opening chapter would undoubtedly be about how he'd never intended to buy her in the first place, showing up at the Sales with his eye on something else. "That was a Spirit of Zeus colt, but I didn't like it when I saw it. I'd brought the horse float with me, so I thought I may as well take something home in it. And then this Christian Cullen filly came into the ring. She was nice and wide in front and had big ears, and they'd been hammering away at $5,000 for ages before I put my finger up and got her for $7,000.
Sowden showed remarkable patience with Mainland Banner early on, taking her back to the workouts again and again for more and more practise. "Right from the first day I put her in the cart she was clever, and relaxed. It was quite incredible," he said. "She's one of those horses that just kept improving every day - you never had to go back and do anything all over again."
It's all been quite a ride since trainer Robert Dunn took over as well...an unofficial record at the trials; seven starts without even looking like getting beaten; $111,824 in the bank so far. "She's very exciting," he said. Dunn says that last week's clash between Mainland Banner and Foreal obviously caught the public's imagination very early on. "I don't think I've ever trained a horse leading up to a race where there's been so much hype from such a long way out. I mean, during Master Musician's era there were like eight millionaires. And the only other time I've experienced that one-on-one hype was when he took on (and beat) Jack Morris in the Victoria Cup."
Dunn says he wasn't "cock-a-hoop" confident leading into last Friday's event, having immense respect for Foreal among others, but despite where she drew he also knew what his filly was capable of. "All those times when you see horses run fifty-five halves, they're only at top speed for about fifty metres of that; this filly can carry that speed for a lot, lot longer. I think she could be a freak," he said.
Credit: John Robinson writing in the NZHR Weekly