Victoria Derby (Group 1)
NEWLY minted owner and trainer Denis Pagan, already famous as a two-time Australian Football League Premiership winning coach with North Melbourne in 1996 and 1999, has stunned both himself and the racing world, saddling up Johnny Get Angry to win the Group 1 Victoria Derby over 2,500 metres at Flemington.
In tears after the race, 73-year-old Pagan has only had an owner-trainer licence for six months with this being his 18th race starter, though he has raced horses for over 20 years.
“I can’t believe it. I didn’t think he could do it. I just wanted to have a runner in it and now he’s won it.” A maiden going into the race, the New Zealand-bred Tavistock gelding was kept handy to the leaders in a race that slackened off along the riverside before sparking into life.
Urged along in the straight, Johnny Get Angry fought all the way to the line to win by a length over the Dundeel colt Hit The Shot and the Tavistock gelding Young Werther.
“This is 10 times better than winning the AFL Grand Final at the minute, I can tell you,” said Pagan. “I’m lost for words. It’s just such an amazing feeling. I just love the Tavistock horses, and I just try to get as many as I can out of Zabeel or Galileo mares. Troy Corstens is the best in the world. He sourced the horse for me – how he got him for NZ$50,000, I’ll never know. He did a terrific job. He’s got all my horses, and it’s another Group 1 winner he’s picked out.”
Crucial to the win was apprentice Lachlan King who rides all the work on Johnny Get Angry and whose own father Steven King won the 1991 Victoria Derby before completing the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double on Lets Elope in the same year.
Empire Rose Stakes (Group 1)
IN what would have been one of the best racecourse ‘mug punter’ tips at this year’s Melbourne Cup carnival, Shout The Bar, a $31 chance, saluted to an empty house, winning Saturday’s Group 1 Empire Rose Stakes for fillies and mares over 1,600 metres.
The Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Not A Single Doubt mare lunged late to get the ‘bob in’ and win by the shortest possible margin from the 1000 Guineas winner Odeum, by Written Tycoon, and the All Too Hard filly Forbidden Love.
“It was incredibly tough the way she kept fighting there,” said Bott. “She looked beaten on a number of occasions. I love the way she just picked herself up.”
Aptly named, Shout The Bar is out of the O’Reilly mare Drinks All Round having been purchased as a yearling from the Gold Coast Magic Millions for A$200,000.
A LAST minute win by the Andreas Wohler-trained Ashrun nudged the Willie Mullins-trained True Self from the Melbourne Cup field.
Fourth in the Geelong Cup 10 days earlier, the French-bred Ashrun with Kerrin McEvoy in the saddle won the Group 3 Hotham Stakes by a nose from the German-bred Sound to secure the final ballot-free entry into the Melbourne Cup displacing True Self who was 24th in the order of entry.
Co. Wexford’s Declan Bates who had the ride on True Self, was able to switch to Ashrun in what was his first Melbourne Cup ride. Ashrun finished 10th earning connections A$160,000.
True Self will now contest today’s Group 3 Queen Elizabeth Stakes over 2,600 metres. Joining her in the field will be Joseph O’Brien’s Pondus who was beaten by a nose in the Group 3 Bendigo Cup.