SUNDAY: April 14, 2024: HAWKESBURY’S Richmond Club Gold Cup is on the agenda for yesterday’s impressive $1m Provincial-Midway Championships Final winner Territory Express.
The $250,000 Group 3 feature will be run over 1600m on May 4 at the club’s annual Saturday stand-alone meeting.
“It will most likely be his next run,” trainer Paul Niceforo said this morning in the wake of the four-year-old’s great performance at Royal Randwick.
Last season’s champion Sydney apprentice Zac Lloyd somehow weaved a passage in the straight from 13th at the 400m on the $4.40 favorite, and the gelding’s brilliant turn of foot carried him to victory over a gallant Hawkesbury trainer Edward Cummings’ Group 1 placegetter Strait Acer ($7) and Shadows Of Love ($12).
After the biggest day of his training career, Niceforo said Territory Express had pulled up well, and he was looking forward to stretching his gelding out to 1600m at Hawkesbury.
Territory Express is no stranger to the track either.
His trainer had such an opinion of him from early on that he ran him in the Group 3 Blacktown Workers Club Group Hawkesbury Guineas (1400m) at last year’s stand-alone fixture.
Territory Express was having only his second start, having finished third in a Newcastle 3YO Maiden Plate (1200m) on debut 10 days earlier on April 12 last year.
He finished seventh in the Guineas as a $101 outsider to Hawaii Five Oh, who also won his next start in Brisbane in the Group 3 Fred Best Classic (1400m) at Eagle Farm before finishing third to Group 1 stars Think About It and Rothfire there in the $3m Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap (1400m).
“Territory Express was unlucky not to have finished second to Hawaii Five Oh at Hawkesbury,” Niceforo said.
“He was slowly away and last on settling down, and never got clear galloping room near the inside in the straight.
“Even though Zac went between horses to win yesterday, Territory Express is better when he can get to the outside with an uninterrupted run.
“We haven’t seen the best of him yet.”
Territory Express won a Benchmark 64 Handicap with 59.5kg over the Hawkesbury Cup distance at Newcastle last October, and Niceforo is adamant he will handle further.
His long-range goal is to win Australasia’s weight-for-age championship, the Group 1 Cox Plate (2040m) at The Valley on October 26, with his talented gelding, who has raced only 14 times to date.
. Hawkesbury trainer Claire Lever continued a successful season when Big Boy George returned to the winning list at Newcastle yesterday.
Ridden by Lee Magorrian, Big Boy George ($6.50) finished strongly to take the Provincial Class 1 Handicap (1200m), overcoming his outside barrier and giving his trainer her ninth win of the current season and career 37th.
A three-year-old by Showtime, the gelding was having only his eighth start for his second success.
Big Boy George fetched $70,000 at the 2022 Magic Millions Gold Coast yearling sale Book 2, and is named after part-owner George Rassos.
He was with Lever when she bought him at that sale.