Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Smart New Zealand-bred gelding Blitzembye warmed up for the $50,000 Four-Year-Old Championship next Friday night in encouraging fashion with an easy victory in the Barbagallo Leaders In Motoring Excellence Pace at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
His victory over Mirragon and Master Publisher at a 1.57.2 rate over the 2130m trip was some compensation for his owners Jim and Wilma Giumelli, whose brilliant stablemate Ragazzo Mach, a winner of ten races, was scratched form a later event on Friday night and will not be able to contest next Friday night’s feature event.
Blitzembye and Ragazzo Mach are trained by Mike Reed, who said that all was well with Ragazzo Mach and that he would be as “good as gold” for his main mission, the $200,000 Gold Nugget on December 16 and for the $125,000 Four-Year-Old Classic a fortnight earlier.
The RWWA stewards revealed that they had given permission for Reed to scratch Ragazzo Mach for precautionary reasons after a stable employee had informed Reed that he may have inadvertently erred in giving Ragazzo Mach a feed intended for another horse in the same stable block which contained medication.
“Blitzembye’s two previous runs had been good,” said Reed. The Bettors Delight gelding had started off the 20m mark and had finished powerfully from tenth at the bell to be an eye-catching third behind Robbie Rocket the previous Friday night.
He started from the inside of the back line in Friday night’s event and was excellent value at $5. He trailed the pacemaker and $1.85 favourite Mirragon until Shannon Suvaljko eased him off the pegs about 460m from home. Blitzembye went three wide on the home turn and finished strongly to win by 5m.
Blitzembye, a winner at two of his eight New Zealand starts, now has raced 29 times for 12 wins, six placings and stakes of $105,379.