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Trainer Sam Chua has found the secret with Cavallo after the gelding landed the $125,000 Peace And Joy 2014 Stakes over 1400m on Wednesday.
Ridden by John Sundradas, Cavallo stormed home to record a half-length victory over El Milagro (Danny Beasley) with Flying Fulton (Shafiq Rizuan) a length-and-a-quarter away in third place.
Since joining Chua’s stable from those of Michael Freedman, Cavallo has notched four wins from seven starts with a third placing thrown in for good measure.
In total Cavallo has now won seven of his 18 starts and has proven a good money spinner for owners, collecting more than $400,000 in prizemoney.
Cavallo came from the second-half of the field on Wednesday. El Milagro set a solid tempo with Speedy Cat (Lisa Allpress) and Keep Away (Mohd Zaki) is close attendance.
Turning for home El Milagro gave a strong kick but the field fanned with Cavallo hooked to the extreme outside to unwind a powerful finish.
Cavallo hit the front with 200m to run and looked all set to score a comfortable victory, but El Milagro refused to concede and fought on strongly to the line while Flying Fulton ran home strongly in the final stages back towards the fence.
Chua said Cavallo was a funny horse to train and didn’t need a lot of work to be at his top and long term hopes the son of Testa Rossa may develop into an Emirates Singapore Derby (2000m) contender in July.
“He is a bit of a funny horse,” said Chua. “You can’t train him too hard.
“We found that out very early on after he came across from Michael Freedman. He won his first start for us and right from then we knew he didn’t need a lot of work.
“What we want from him is to relax as much as possible and we are happy for him to find his own feet in a race and let him be where he wants.
“We were hoping for a bit of rain today as we think he likes a bit of give, but the track has been re-laid in the straight and the new track today gave him a bit of cushion.
“We’ll just see how he keeps progressing and see where he gets to in the coming months, but the way he is relaxing in his races at this stage he could end up being a Derby horse.
“A million dollars is a lot of money and you don’t often get the chance to run in those sorts of races.”
John said he knew Cavallo had a strong finish on him and was hopeful of him running out a strong 1400m on Wednesday after flopping at two previous attempts at the trip for Chua.
“I sat behind and let him be happy,” said John. “He has a good finish and I was hoping he would run out the 1400m trip.
“When I got him to the outside he really finished hard. At the 300m I could see those horses to the inside were not going anywhere and I was confident that I could win the race.”
