Australian wonder-mare, Winx going out on a perfect note with 33 consecutive Group wins, and a resurgent Tiger Woods coming back from personal travails and injuries to again win the Masters, are cases where things go according to “the script.”
But, every now and then something completely unexpected happens in sport – Camphoratus winning the G1 Empress Club Stakes is one such bolt from the blue. The daughter of Byword was an unconsidered 100/1 outsider yet dramatically improved her speed figure from 97 to 107 when just outdueling Running Brave (s/s 107), Nafaayes (s/s 105) and Oh Susanna (s/s 103).
This was a notable first G1 score for trainer Robbie Hill and journey-man jock, Gareth Wright. After the event, one can always find some redeeming virtue in the form book to justify what happened – Camphoratus had conceded weight and finished a fair second to Insignis in the Jacaranda two weeks prior, but nearly all punters looking at her overall form after 17 starts dismissed her as a no-hoper up against a strong line-up on soft ground. Such are the vagaries of this horse racing game!
In a low-key card at Durbanville, Captain of Stealth (s/s 97) justified a big reputation, for fearless plungers climbing in at 5/10, by duly winning comfortably. This very talented son of Captain Al proved much the best in a good adjusted time and should be followed till beaten.
Horseplayers really need to be alert – a rain shower at the start of the Durbanville meeting suddenly caused the going to become a bit choppy which created a biased track. Every winner, excepting Bella Summer, made a race-winning rails run down the inside.
Full marks to those jockeys that were skilful, and lucky enough to seize the golden rail and sneak through. Meanwhile, punters may want to upgrade the efforts of horses that tried valiantly to make moves in the center of the track but got bogged down (e.g. Nexus, Mumtaz and Fabian) as their runs were better than what they will look on paper.