At the end of a question evening in Addington on Friday there was an explanation.
And the one that made Jumal had an exclamation point.
The Steven Reid-trained youngster capped a magical evening of harness racing with a remarkable performance in the NZBS Harness Million, overcoming a second line pull and having to settle well back to come in.
He did that after being forced three wide in the 800m and when he should have backed off, Jumal did something different, scoring one of New Zealand’s great juvenile pacing victories this century.
Make no mistake, we’ve had some great youngsters in this country over the last 25 years, but Jumal’s performance would be in the top 10 by any of them since we were above 2000.
JUMAL REPEAT
He was brave and brilliant, suggesting that somewhere in what is not the deepest girth ever seen on a race track is a disproportionately large heart.
It always helps when a really good horse has sympathetic connections and Jumal has those at owner, trainer and driver level.
But there’s no telling how far he will go. Some young people are shooting stars who never grow enough to improve or whose speed eventually leads to problems that rob them of longevity.
So no one is proclaiming Reidman’s newest star as a future New Zealand Cup winner, but what he did in the final round on Friday was not the stuff of a good youth player. He’s a great one.
Jumal will get another chance to prove that in the $200,000 Woodlands Stud Sires’ Stakes at Addington on Cup Day.
He is so good that his well-deserved hype will fit seamlessly into the Group 1 fabric of our biggest day of racing.
While the son of Downbytheseaside put an end to the feud on Friday evening, many of the other performances at major races only added to the intrigue in their crops, for example Got The Chocolates’ victory in the Dakin Group Flying Stakes.
He had hinted earlier this campaign with two blinders that he was closing the gap on Marketplace and Rubira, but on Friday evening it was they who could not close the gap on him.
After resolving themselves early, with Marketplace crossing the lead from a passive Rubira, Got The Chocolates knocked and they opened the door.
Even on a night dominated by leaders or those on the marks, you would have made little allowance for Marketplace to run past Got The Chocolates on the passing track, but a beautifully judged John Dunn 26.5 final 400 meters on the leader left Marketplace with too much to do.
There’s at least one twist, maybe two, in Marketplace before The Velocity and the NZ Derby, but Got The Chocolates is now a horse to be feared and races that looked like Marketplace’s to lose could prove to have a few more moving parts.
But that was the story of the evening: the best horses against the marks went so fast for so long that they were impossible to catch.
One exception was Kyvalley Ray, the Williamson-bred trotter sold to a good guy in Jim Connolly, who came home to win the $75,000 NZBS Harness Million Trot for trainer Brent Lilley.
He was one of the few all night who broke the trend of being on the markers and still being able to win.
A trend that Jumal later treated with joyful disgust in the richest race of the spring so far to light the fuse of Cup week.
For full race results, click here.
Through Michael Guerinfor Harness Racing New Zealand
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