Siege Courageous triumphs

Representational images

With only 250m to go, five-year-old Siege Courageous guided by jockey Antony Raj courageously forced his way between the front-running duo of Golden Neil and Magileto to win the Yohan Z Poonawalla Turf Club Trophy (Gr 3), the feature event of Saturday's eight-race card. The favourite Royal Mysore (Akshay Kumar up) moved up from mid-bunch very fast--but very late, to finish half a length behind the winner. Incidentally, both winner and the runner up were trained by Prasanna Kumar.

Jockey Neeraj Rawal and trainer Imtiaz Sait teamed up to score a very deserving double on Saturday: their three-year-old Regina Memorabilis (Ampere - Ibiza Empress) registered dramatic improvement over her recent debut run on the same track when winning the Indian Association of Equine Practitioners (IAEP) Trophy; while four-year-old Christophany, who had displayed quality early speed over 1400m in last start, excelled over the shorter trip (1200m) to lift the Western India Racehorse Owners' Association Trophy.

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In the opening race, the Jockeys Association Of India Trophy, jockey Mustakim Alam astride Prince Igor took charge of the race soon on entering the homestretch but could not sustain when the Nazzak Chenoy-trained Precioso (Vishal Bunde up) moved up menacingly in the final yards to snatch the race from him. Mustakim, however, quickly made amends in the next race when he took Alpine Star, trained by Narendra Lagad, on a successful start-to-finish mission to bag the Rajaram Chhatrapati Trophy.

The Western India Trainers Association (WITA) Trophy was split into two divisions. Despite eight months' absence from the racetrack Zuccaro, trained by Pesi Shroff, posted an impressive victory in the lower division; while the upper division threw up a shock winner in Brave Beauty who, in the hands of Shahrukh Khan, scored at the odds of 20-to-1 for trainer Hosidar Daji.