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Long-priced Waialae’s all-the-way victory may have stunned most, but it did bring the old firm of owner Bernard Lee and the Freedman name back in the winner’s circle on Friday night.
Lee has raced many good horses at Kranji under the Horizon Stable banner, mainly with Don Baertschiger and his son Shane, and Michael Freedman, with 2011 Group 1 Raffles Cup winner Always Certain and 2015 Group 2 Singapore Three-Year-Old Classic winner Spanish Bay among his leading lights.
The dark blue and yellow stars jersey has been noticeably less visible of late, especially since Freedman pulled up stumps in 2015, with Spanish Bay - now with Freedman’s former assistant-trainer James Peters - the only runner left from the old guard.
The Nadeem six-year-old was actually the last winner to salute for Lee after he took out the Group 3 Saas Fee Stakes (1400m) in October 2016.
With Freedman’s Hall of Fame elder brother Lee taking up stables at Kranji last year, Lee decided to throw his support behind the family again, starting slowly with Waialae, a three-year-old by Sepoy.
After an average Kranji debut when sixth to Terrific in a Restricted Maiden race over 1200m, Waialae was unsurprisingly friendless in the market at $256 in Friday’s $85,000 Restricted Maiden race over 1400m, more so when he had drawn the outermost alley in 14.
But courtesy of a smart ride from Craig Grylls, Waialae nullified that drawback by jumping out quickly before coming across the face of the field to find the fence rather easily.
From that point onwards, Grylls tried to conserve the energy of his mount for as long as he could, and from the way Waialae kicked clear halfway up the straight, it was clear the Kiwi jockey had the fuel efficiency box ticked on his repertoire of skills.
Waialae scored by 1 ½ lengths with Cracking Tottie (Michael Rodd) running on late to beat Lady Counsel (Olivier Placais) for second place by a nose. The winning time was 1min 23.65secs for the 1400m on the Short Course.
“Bernard Lee has been a long-time client of Michael’s here with horses like Always Certain. He won plenty of races with Michael and it’s good he won one for me tonight,” said Freedman.
“With the bad gate, I said to Craig to fire him out and go to the front. Craig was able to get the horse to get a lovely rest and when I saw him still going strong at the top of the straight, I knew it’d be all over.”
Grylls said that first early win when stepped up to 1400m should do Waialae a world of good from now on.
“He was drawn wide, and he did show some speed in his trials. He was out very fast, and came across easy,” said the Kiwi jockey.
“We got some cheap sectionals and he travelled good throughout. It was a good effort to win over 1400m, it should help him pick up on his confidence.”
