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Trainer Cliff Brown took the training honours on Friday when he saddled a memorable winning treble, his first since September 2011.
Photo by Singapore Turf Club
The Australian handler first combined with jockey John Powell to pick up his first two wins with Shin Goong and debutant What’s Dat in Race 2 and 4 respectively before wrapping up the prolific night with his English import Foxtrot Hotel in the $75,000 Mexican Rose Class 3 race over 1200m on Polytrack.
While Brown was over the moon with his first hat-trick since Lightning Thief, What Now and Deep Pockets pulled off a similar feat on September 23, 2011, he had a softer spot for Foxtrot Hotel, a one-time winner at Newbury (1214m) for his English owner Richard Pegum before he was sent to Brown last year.
“I just love this horse. I would say he is with Zac Influence and What Now my three favourite horses at the stable,” said Brown whose biggest haul in Singapore was a four-timer in April 2011.
“They are real characters and this one (Foxtrot Hotel) is really a lovely horse. I must say it is the first prep I’ve trained him as a sprinter and he seems to like it.
“He didn’t quite handle the wet tracks at his last campaign. He’ll get back on turf at his next race, but the only thing I’m not sure about is whether he’s more of a six-furlong or seven-furlong horse.”
While winning jockey Steven King will gladly leave that to the trainer to work out, he was only too happy to have been the one warming the saddle, especially when luck had been rather elusive since he began his stint in January.
“I’ve had nine seconds since I’ve begun riding here. If half of them had won, I would have had a pretty good stint here,” said the Melbourne Cup-winning jockey who was bringing up his fourth win.
“Cliff has been good to me since I came here. It was nice of him to keep me on this horse.
“He’s improved a lot from his last run. The weights are very important in Singapore and I think the pull in weights (between him and his last-start conqueror Boundless Glory) helped him a lot too.”
Favourite Boundless Glory (Joao Moreira) was meeting Foxtrot Hotel 2.5kg worse off for a one-length beating and despite pulling out all the stops inside the last furlong, could not stop his runner-up from turning the tables on Sunday.
Well rated by King in a one-off position outside Chateauneuf Dupape (Manoel Nunes) from the start, Foxtrot Hotel ($14) took it up the straight once his jockey gave him his head at the 250m, drawing clear before Boundless Glory whittled down the margin to 1 ½ length. Chateauneuf Dupape stuck on well for third another length away.
The winning time was 1min 11.56secs.
Foxtrot Hotel, who has now bumped up his stakes earnings to over $165,000 from his three wins and four placings in Singapore, also figures among the just-released free nominations to the Group 1 $1 million KrisFlyer International Sprint (1200m) in May, but Brown is far from making it the Irish-bred Majestic Missile five-year-old’s be-all and end-all this season.
“That is just in case. I’m looking more at a race like the EW Barker Trophy for him,” he said.
Run on November 10, the 1400m race is a Group 2 handicap event which Brown captured with What Now last year.