Stonybreck claims synthetic feature

[Wandering Eyes]

Stonybreck (NZ) (Tavistock) continued his dominant run of form on the country’s synthetic tracks on Wednesday, when securing a comfortable victory in the Richard Bright Memorial Cup 1550 at Cambridge.

The consistent son of Tavistock broke his maiden just over a year ago at Cambridge and was a heavily supported favourite in a tidy field of polytrack specialists. Wednesday’s victory was his third in as many starts at the venue and his fourth on the all-weather surface.

Piloted expertly by Opie Bosson, Stonybreck travelled midfield before moving into contention at the top of the straight, and looked to be only extending his lead when scoring by a long neck over Monza (NZ) (Rios).

“He’s a lovely progressive horse, he’s been really consistent and probably only still lightly raced, and keeps stepping up,” said Sam Bergerson, who trains in partnership with Mark Walker.

“He’s obviously taken a liking to the synthetic, but I don’t think this will be his last win, hopefully he can progress on to be a group and listed horse.”

The four-year-old could have some sizeable targets on the horizon following his recent run of form, with Bergerson mentioning the likes of the Coupland’s Bakeries Mile (Gr.3, 1600m) in November or the newly-instated Karaka Million 4YO Mile (1600m) early in 2024 to be possibilities.

“He’s pretty well in at the handicaps at the moment, so he’s got a lot of options for him going forward,” he said.

Te Akau Racing also produced another victor in Hayate (NZ) (Maurice) earlier in the card in the Cambridge Equine Hospital 1550.

The Maurice five-year-old raced a distant third in the running behind Drum Major (NZ) (Epaulette) and Champagne Lola (NZ) (Sweynesse) but challenged and out-toughened the pair in the straight to power away for a two-and-a-quarter length victory under Niranjan Parmar.

“She seems to mix her form a bit, we gave her a freshen-up and her work at home was really good when we tried a few different things, so it’s good to see her back in the winner’s circle,” Bergerson said.

The Te Akau stable was also represented at the Cambridge meeting by placegetters Our Milly Bee (Merchant Navy) and Ragamuffin (NZ) (Belardo), the former producing her fifth minor placing in the Waipa Earthworks 1550.

“She always seems to be half a shade slow which lets her down, she’s not the biggest horse but she tries hard,” Bergerson said.

“She sort of had to shove her way into the clear and ran on nice enough, we might try her over a bit more ground.”

Stablemate Ragamuffin was denied a third career win when Super Time (NZ) (Super Easy) just held the Belardo gelding out by a short neck in the Group One Turf Bar 1300.

“It was a nice effort, he was dropping back to Rating 60 and Parmar gave him a lovely run, he just unfortunately wasn’t able to peg back that winner,” Bergerson said.

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