Boyneside Fun (Big Daddy Cool-Montblacnc, Oct 12) gave clues to a second Derby attempt when clocking the fastest 500 metre run at Sheffield so far this year.
The Charlie Lister trained white and black, who hit the rail in last year’s Derby quarter finals, was tackling his first ‘full’ four bends since September on Tuesday night. After a good early buckle with five-timer chasing Lightfoot Scolar, the 7-2 chance pulled away for an impressive four and a half length win in 28.51.
That time was just three spots slower La Maqina’s best in 2015, a performance he was unable to reproduce in a later race on last night’s card where his winning time was 28.79.
Earlier on the same card, Barrie Draper’s Ballymac Ramsay (Droopys Scolari-Ballymac Razl, Mar 14) made some amends for his costly defeat in the recent Towcester Puppy Final with a 28.73 victory over the Sheffield standard. It was his eighth win in 14 outings.
Then meeting also featured three trialstakes for the forthcoming Queen Mother Memorial and all went to locally trained runners. The quickest of the trio was Tony McKenna’s Kilpatrick Ted who produced probably the best performance of his career to beat last year’s QM finalist Dinzeo by four lengths in 38.94.
Malls Pet returned to six bends following a marathon win and clocked a personal best of 39.10 when winning at 9-4 while Doncaster Leger winner Swift Curie was surprisingly beaten by Barrie Draper’s 5-1 chance Droopys Gonza.
NOTE: The Coors Queen Mother Cup is for 18 runners over 660m and gets underway on Tuesday March 1 – final Sunday March 6. The winner collects £3,000 (RU £500, 3rd £400, 4th £300, 5th £200, 6th £100). Entries close on February 26
