It’s been a steady start to 2012 but Ellerslie provided a spectacular boost to the Cloughmore fortunes today with both The Jungle Boy and Durham Town recording impressive victories.
Homebred The Jungle Boy trialled encouragingly for Wednesday’s Group 1 Auckland Cup, showing impressive acceleration from the back to the field to narrowly defeat a game Titch and the favourite Shez Sinsational in the Nathans Memorial Handicap. The Cup field will also feature Single Minded and Blood Brotha, to name but two well-credentialled rivals, so it will be anything but a walk in the park next week for the Jungle Pocket 6YO. Nevertheless, there’s certainly cause for hope.
The absence of Nash Rawiller indicated that Durham Town had every chance of success in the Group 3 Darley Plate over 1200 metres – and so it proved. This horse is one serious sprinter: he’s got good gate speed, the ability to relax and a devastating turn of foot, even on tracks that don’t really suit him. In my opinion, he still has room for improvement and you wouldn’t be surprised if ultimately he was competitive in Australia.
As readers are well aware, the Falkirk gelding was bought by Donna Logan out of the Festival Sale of 2009, Cloughmore providing pedigree advice in support of the purchase. This year’s sales resulted in six lots ending up in the ownership of Cloughmore clients: fillies by Sir Percy – Devant (Zabeel), Elvstroem – Evana (Entrepreneur), Keeper – Giuliana (Zabeel), Sakhee’s Secret – Louders (Danasinga), Thorn Park – Lyric (Grosvenor) and a colt by Any Suggestion – Diaga (Kinjite). Although Premier Sale vendors found the going difficult, it was not easy to buy a quality individual at either the Select or Festival levels.
Talking of quality individuals, I was much impressed by the stock of Mettre En Jeu in the Festival Sale. The colts I saw all looked very much the same and, as Mettre En Jeu looks very much like Montjeu, this has to be good news. On following up my observations with studmaster Nigel Auret, he commented that Letham has some yearling fillies available at a reasonable price. Given the increased advantages enjoyed by fillies through the revamped handicapping system, buying a nice filly is becoming an interesting investment option.
