San Simeon sheds maiden tag

[Wandering Eyes]

San Simeon (NZ) (Zacinto) displayed shades of his talented stablemate Johny Johny (NZ) (Charm Spirit) when producing a dominant front-running maiden victory in the Saddlery Warehouse 1300 at Cambridge on Wednesday.

Conditioned by local trainers Tim and Margaret Carter, the son of Zacinto was allowed to roll forward and control the pace by an in-form Joe Doyle, before comfortably travelling into the straight to bolt away from favourite Lili Marlene (NZ) (Per Incanto) by an increasing four-and-a-half lengths.

“He’s always shown a bit of ability this horse, he’s just been a bit immature mentally,” Tim Carter said.

“We’re really happy he put it all together today, Joe got him out and running and settled which was the key to it. It looks like he might get over a bit further too.

“He definitely likes the better tracks, we had him nominated for this weekend coming up (on turf) but we decided to go back on the synthetic because he’s definitely a firm track horse with such a nice action.”

The Carters stable star Johny Johny was a late scratching in last Saturday’s feature Gr.2 Foxbridge Plate (1200m) after sustaining a hoof abscess during the week.

“He had a foot abscess and it wasn’t right on the morning of the race so we decided to pull him out, in a high-class field you can’t go in being 80 percent right,” Carter said.

“All the wet weather around has had a lot of horses with them, he didn’t actually show anything until the Wednesday and it didn’t come right in time, it’s just the way racing goes.”

A son of Charm Spirit, Johny Johny had been at his front-running best of late taking two open handicap victories on the bounce leading into the race, but Carter indicated he will now be targeted towards the Gr.3 Sweynesse Stakes (1215m) on October 15.

“He’s fine now, we’re looking at running him at Te Rapa in a few weeks’ time, then onto Rotorua.”

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