3 minute read
5/1 chance Biggles proved his worth in big handicaps once more when recording a seventh career success in the £120,000 bet365 Bunbury Cup Heritage Handicap.
The pace looked messy in the early stages, but that proved no problem for Ryan Moore and Biggles as the pair stayed on strongly between rivals to score by two lengths in this afternoon's Bunbury Cup.
Last year's runner-up Ropey Guest produced a fine effort once more to fill the second spot again at odds of 11/1 under Sean Levey while market leader Awaal (7/2), who looked likely to play a major role in the business end a few furlongs from home, finished back in third.
Winning trainer Ralph Beckett said: "He's been a phenomenally consistent horse all his life, I got it wrong a couple of times, but I was really pleased with the way he was going today. He jumped a bit keen, and it was a case of getting him behind one or two. Ryan came in and said that the ride was fun as he thought he'd win throughout. The rain has obviously helped and I'm not sure he needs it now, but he's more effective on it, so I was delighted with how things worked out.
"When a horse is as consistent as he is, it's kind of hard to win this sort of handicap. He went up 9lbs for winning under Hector Crouch at Newbury in a 10 grand race last year and I kind of thought we were done after that, so it's great to win a Bunbury Cup.
"He's a model of consistency and it's funny as I trained his mother, who was small and disappointed us really. He's a homebred so it's great to win that.
"I tried a mile with him and that wasn't very clever, but he's always been capable of doing this. I just had to place him to do it. We could look at Ascot at the end of the month [the International Stakes at Ascot] but that might come a bit quick. He needs a strong gallop, so perhaps going up to small-field stakes races might make life easier for him. We'll go over six or seven furlongs anyway, but we'll enjoy today."
Sean Levey, rider of second-place Ropey Guest, said: "He was drawn on the better side this year and I wasn't able to make use of that. It got a bit messy early doors and there wasn't much pace on.
"There were a lot of keen horses in the race and the pace was very indecisive for the first couple of furlongs as far as a true pace was concerned.
"The horse beside me just kept lighting him up so I chose to move away from that and as a result they challenged on the other side. He has run really well. Always on the back of your mind you think if I was able to hold my pitch maybe I would have been able to better that position by one."
