Joey Ramsden has an exciting 3yo on his hands as the Western Winter gelding Attenborough showed when returning from a break to produce a swashbuckling performance for a good win in the R150 000 Listed In Full Flight Handicap at Scottsville on Sunday.
Anton Marcus flies up on Attenborough to score an impressive win
Having his first run as a gelding, the Listed Somerset 1200 winner had shown smart potential as a 2yo and was given a break after an unplaced run in the CTS 1200 on Sun Met day.
At his first run in KZN, Attenborough was allowed to dawdle near the rear as Gr1 winner Guiness led the stampede down the straight 1100m.
The well backed Purple Tractor moved up dangerously at the 250m as Greg Cheyne appeared to have made a match winning move.
But he had no answer to the dazzling turn of foot shown by Attenborough, who was switched out by Anton Marcus and made up lengths late to win going away by a length in a time of 60,89 secs.
Attenborough broke the 1100m course record formerly held by Captain Alfredo by 1,01 seconds in the process.
Joey Ramsden – could have some fun with Attenborough this season
The winner started at 9-2.
The disappointment of the race was the boom Pathfork gelding Red Chesnut Road, who ran second last after appearing to have every chance under Callan Murray.
Winning rider Anton Marcus said that Attenborough had generally not produced his homework on track.
“As fate would have it, he put up a howler on Tuesday morning work this past week. But we carried on. I think the secret is to ride him cold. This was a nice win,” said Marcus, who made a great choice from the six Mayfair Speculators runners in the field.
A R2 million Cape Yearling Sale Book 1 graduate, Attenborough has now won 4 races from 11 starts for 7 places and stakes of R1 344 025.
Attenborough was bred by Pippa Mickleburgh and is a son of the champion Western Winter out of the four-time winning Caesour mare, In Camera.
