Jockey Michael Dee urges former New Zealand galloper Hit The Road Jack to victory in last Saturday’s Deane Lester Flemington Cup.
Jockey Michael Dee urges former New Zealand galloper Hit The Road Jack to victory in last Saturday’s Deane Lester Flemington Cup.
Former Hawke’s Bay-based jockey Michael Dee had a red letter day at the famous Flemington racetrack in Melbourne last Saturday although his knack of riding outsiders to the front didn’t endear him to the punters.
Dee, 28, kicked home four of the nine winners on the card, the fourth time he has ridden four winners at a metropolitan meeting and the first time he has had a four-win haul at Flemington.
It capped a memorable week for Dee as he recently announced his engagement to his girlfriend, former jockey Makaela Lawrence.
It also took his tally of Australian metropolitan wins to 51 for the season, the first time he has cracked a half-century of city winners. He is also likely to finish third in the Melbourne Jockeys’ Premiership, behind Damien Lane and Blake Shinn.
“It was a goal to get to 50 city winners, so I’m pleased and it’s awesome to have finished top three,” Dee said.
Dee originally started out working for the Hastings stable of Guy Lowry and Grant Cullen before a stint with Whanganui trainer Kevin Myers.
Michael Dee.
He then decided to head across the Tasman and has not looked back with his career tally now in excess of 800 wins including victories in two of Australia’s most prestigious Group 1 events, the Caulfield Cup (2400m) and the Blue Diamond Stakes (1200m).
While the first of Dee’s winning quartet last Saturday was on the $1.90 hot favourite First Settler and another was on an 8-to-one chance (Hit The Road Jack), the other two were despised outsiders.
Liberami paid $19.70 for a win while Horrifying returned a dividend of $54.60 for a win and $8.90 for a place.
Hit The Road Jack and Horrifying made up the second and third legs of the late Quadrella at the Melbourne meeting and, combined with another outsider in Mr Exclusive ($43.00) taking out the first leg and Moonhaven ($8.30) in the last, the Quadrella dividend was a mammoth $323,650.90.
Dee only had five rides at the meeting with the first being aboard the talented two-year-old First Settler in the $163,000 Russell Dawson Plate (1000m). The colt was coming off a debut win over 1000m at Caulfield last month and showed his class again, forging clear of his rivals in the final stages to remain unbeaten.
It was a satisfying success for Dee as he has now been aboard First Settler in both of his wins and the big strong son of Written Tycoon is trained at Cranbourne by Mick Price and Mick Kent junior. When Dee went to Australia he completed his jockey apprenticeship from the Mick Price stable, when he was based at Caulfield.
Dee’s second win came aboard the New Zealand-bred Liberami in the $163,000 Leigh Hughes Trophy (1400m), with three-year-old Turn Me Loose gelding getting in off the ballot following scratchings.
Dee’s third win was on the former New Zealand-trained Hit The Road Jack in the $190,000 Deane Lester Flemington Cup (2800m) and came at the expense of Blaike McDougal, who was stranded in Mildura. He had ridden there the previous day and his flight back to Melbourne was cancelled due to the world-wide IT hardware meltdown.
Dee said it was especially satisfying for him to win the race named after the late Australian racing form guru Deane Lester as he had been a great help with his career.
“It’s an honour to win this race named after Deane Lester. I had a lot of help from him and it’s a privilege to have won it,” Dee said.
Completing the winning quartet for Dee was another New Zealand-bred, Horrifying, who made a return to form after a long absence with a determined win in the $163,000 Peter Drake Plate (2000m).
Warrnambool trainer Symon Wilde had two runners in the $190,000 Deane Lester Flemington Cup (2800m) at Flemington last Saturday and produced a winning quinella with the Kiwi-bred pair of Hit The Road Jack and Dashing Duchess.
Hit The Road Jack was sent across the Tasman to Wilde’s stable with a jumping future in mind. The Jakkalberry gelding had won seven times from 48 starts on home soil for his former trainer Shaun Phelan, who still retains an ownership share along with his father Craig.
Hit The Road Jack earned more than $245,000 in stakes from his New Zealand starts, which also included fifth placings in the Group 2 Avondale Cup (2400m) and Group 3 New Zealand Cup (3200m).
An eye-catching fourth when he made his Australian debut at Caulfield late last month, Hit The Road Jack switched to hurdling and made a perfect start in that role with a four-length maiden win at Warrnambool on July 7.
Wilde brought the seven-year-old back to the flat last Saturday, and his superior stamina shone through in the heavy track conditions with a powerful performance.
Presented at the top of the straight by rider Michael Dee, Hit The Road Jack started to hit top gear and swept past the leader and race favourite Taramansour.
The biggest challenge then came from his stablemate Dashing Duchess, who fought gamely on his inside, but Hit The Road Jack edged ahead of her to win by three-quarters of a length.
“He’s a great old campaigner,” Dee said. “He’s been around the traps all around New Zealand. I watched some replays from New Zealand, where he would often take off mid-race and just keep going.
“The key was to keep him in a position where he could work into it and he made easy work of it. I think he almost thought his job was done at the 200 metres and was waiting for them a little bit. It was a great effort.”
The seven-year-old chestnut has now had 51 starts for nine wins and 14 placings and has won $356,803 in stakes.
Bred by Novara Park principal Luigi Muollo under his Explosive Breeding banner, Hit The Road Jack is one of three winners out of the Istidaad mare Ististar, whose 10 wins included the Group 3 Cuddle Stakes (1600m) at Trentham, Listed Rotorua Stakes (1400m) and the Tauranga Classic (1400m) twice.
Crouch, a lightly raced four-year-old part-owned by Napier’s Roy Potter, made an auspicious return to form with a determined win in the $40,000 open handicap over 1900m at Hawera on Tuesday.
The big Tarzino gelding, appreciating the heavy-10 track conditions, brought up his fourth win from only 12 starts when he outstayed the leader Urenui after the pair had worked clear of the rest of the field in the home straight.
In what turned out to be a slog to the line, jockey Kavish Chowdhoory managed to get the best out of Crouch and he got home by a long neck over Urenui, with 4-1/2 lengths back to third-placed Soldier Boy.
It was Crouch’s first success since he recorded three wins in the space of four starts in the winter of last year and all four of his victories have been on heavy tracks.
Crouch is prepared by Awapuni trainer Mike Breslin, who bought the horse for $20,000 at the 2021 Karaka yearling sales and races him in partnership with Potter.
The pair have been good friends for a number of years and have bought and raced several horses together.
Breslin said he was drawn to Crouch once he realised he was out of a half-sister to Klose, a horse that won four races from only 16 starts from his stable and still rates as one of the best he has trained.
Breslin is a former New Zealand national soccer representative and both Klose and Crouch are named after top European soccer players.
Peter Crouch was a striker who played for a number of clubs including Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Stoke City and scored 22 goals in 42 appearances for England.
Group 1 winner Prowess up for auction
A special standalone sale on Gavelhouse Plus will give breeders a rare opportunity to secure a transtasman Group 1 winner.
The auction of Prowess will run from August 2 to August 8 on Gavelhouse Plus.
Trained by Roger James and Robert Wellwood for a family syndicate headed by Dean Skipper, Prowess won eight of her 12 starts including five consecutive black-type victories as a three-year-old.
Prowess was a $230,000 yearling purchase at Karaka in 2021 from the draft of breeders Hallmark Stud, and she turned that into more than $1.65 million in prizemoney in a glittering career.
Her wins included Group 1 victories in the Bonecrusher Stakes (2050m) at Ellerslie and Vinery Stakes (2000m) in Sydney while she also took out the Group 2 David & Karyn Ellis Fillies Classic (2000m) and Group 2 Auckland Guineas (1600m) at Te Rapa.
“She’s taken us on an amazing ride and it’s definitely a shame that it’s coming to an end,” Skipper said. “We have some mixed emotions about putting her up for sale.
“But the way we look at it is that we were just so fortunate to have had one as good as her, and now she’s ready to go on to the next stage of her career.
“She’s fit and well and a happy horse. She could probably even have made it back to the racetrack if we wanted to wait a bit longer. But she’s at a premium stage of her life to start her breeding career now, and we always set it up so that we would sell her at around this time and have her in the best possible condition for that.”
