Iron Age stuns rivals in feature event

Representational Pic

Iron Age, the oldest horse in the line-up for the Yohan Poonawalla Turf Club Trophy (Gr 3), stunned his relatively younger rivals by pulling off a rather easy start-to-finish victory in the feature event. The Imtiaz Sait-trained seven-year-old, owned by Mr & Mrs Shapoor P Mistry of Manjri stud in partnership with DR Thacker, Vishal D Shah and SR Sanas, clocked 1m:24.013s for the seven-furlong trip.

Friendless at 15/1

There was sizable betting on the outstation challenger, Ashwa Bravo (A Sandesh up) which eased the price on the favourite, Joaquin, from 13/10 to 17/10, even as Iron Age was completely neglected in the betting, and went to the gates friendless at 15/1. Iron Age jumped out smartly to hit the front, and led all the way to bring the field into the homestretch. On straightening up, Joaquin, who had stalked Iron Age all the way until then, suddenly showed signs of discomfort and started dropping back, leaving the job of challenging the leader to his owner-mate Leopard Rock (Yash Narredu up). However, Leopard Rock struggled to match strides with Iron Age, even as all other rivals went completely out of contention, the favourite Joaquin dropping back to finish last.

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Jockey A Sandesh won two races on the card, both for trainer Dallas Todywalla, when he adroitly maneuvered Raffaello to grab the upper division of the P Hadow Trophy, and followed it up in quick succession by taking Successor on a start-to-finish mission to lift the Turf Authorities Of India Trophy. Two other trainers, Imtiaz Sait and Pesi Shroff, also saddled a brace each, the former sending out Campaign besides Iron Age, and the latter leading in Thunberg and Souza.