Reigning SA Champion jockey Keagan de Melo celebrated his return to his homeland from Hong Kong with a beautifully judged front-running ride on the Justin Snaith trained Get Impressed to win the R200 000 World Pool With Tabgold Listed Darley at Hollywoodbets Greyville on Sunday.
Get Impressed under Keagan de Melo keeps getting pressed at his task to hold off Sundance Kid (Rachel Venniker) in a nice finish to the opener (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
Formerly raced as The Darley Arabian, the 1600m feature opened the World Pool Gold Cup day action under partly cloudy skies, with a decent tailwind in play.
Jumping from a favourable 2 draw, De Melo had the consistent son of Vercingetorix leading from the gun and brought the field for home, just ahead of stablemate Itsrainingwilliam and the favourite Joker Man.
Inside the 200m, Get Impressed (28-10) never looked like being caught and he galloped on powerfully to hold off longshot Sundance Kid (16-1) by a half length, with the Tony Peter charge Money Heist (10-1) a further 0,30 lengths away in third.
Joker Man failed to make the frame.
The winner clocked 93,60 secs.
“It wasn’t the intention to lead, but my stablemate didn’t have the speed and my horse stayed on all the way,” added Keagan de Melo at his first ride on African soil this season.
Winning trainer Justin Snaith got one up on Sean Tarry early and said that he needed to go back home and get working on Get Impressed, who could be worth pencilling in for next term.
Raced by Greg Bortz, Gary Player and Gina Goldsmith, the Millstream Farm bred gelding is a son of Vercingetorix (Silvano) out of the three time winning Al Mufti mare, So Impressed.
A R1 million Cape Yearling Sale purchase, Get Impressed made it 4 wins with 7 places from 14 starts for stakes of R501 826.
