By MIKE DILLON
If you are wondering over the future of the jumping game, trainer Tony Cole says don't.
The current season's jumping features might be slightly down on numbers, but Cole says the raw material is there for the next five or six years.
Last year Cole won his second consecutive Mercedes Great Northern Steeplechase with Royal Ways, one of only a couple of jumpers he was preparing.
"This year I've got 14 or 15 young jumpers in my team," he says.
Suembul's $25,000 Sunshine Brooks McGregor Grant Steeplechase win at Ellerslie on Saturday, at only his sixth 'chasing attempt may highlight the current lack of depth at the top, but this was no fluke win.
Seumbul is a real jumping star of the future.
His emergence from nowhere has been spectacular.
"There is so much improvement in this horse," said winning rider Craig Thornton, replacing Ross Elliot, who could not make the 60kg.
"Everything about him suggests he is going to get better and better. He doesn't really know anything."
Suembul staggered Elliot when he won at Ellerslie on June 2, Elliot believing the horse to be well short of the fitness required to win.
Stepping up to open class and 4900m on Saturday, Suembul would not have surprised Elliot or his partner, trainer Shelley Hale, if he had flagged in the tough closing stages.
Suembul looked distinctly out of sorts when he returned to the birdcage, perhaps feeling the effects of a very hard race.
"He's okay today," said Elliot yesterday.
"He just wanted to walk away after being unsaddled, but everyone crowded around to take the official photos and he wasn't happy.
"He hadn't really had the preparation for what he did yesterday and he was perhaps showing a bit of that. It was a big ask."
Suembul will head to the Wellington Steeplechase and Elliot will be interested to see if he gets the 62kg to allow him to ride the talented emerging star.
If not, the logical replacement would again be Craig Thornton, who was impressed by his first experience with the horse.
"He gave me everything he had. He's a smart horse."
In October Thornton will do one more brief stint riding on the East Coast of the United States, where he has spent most of the last 10 years before returning home to marry fellow jockey Trudy Collett in January.
Thornton's overseas stints have been financially very rewarding, but he says that does not detract from Saturday's win.
"It's a big thrill for me to win this race.
"I've had heaps of rides in it and while I've had seconds and thirds, I've never won it.
"I know it's only $25,000, but it's a feature race and it means a lot to me.
"Money isn't everything - it can't buy you happiness.
"I just love riding around Ellerslie."
Shelley Hale dedicated the win to the late Paul Fitzgerald, who died suddenly a couple of months ago.
"Paul won this race last year. He was a great friend of my partner Ross and myself."
The future of former Jumper Of The Year Kildary King looks dicey after being pulled up by rider Jamie Gillies before climbing the Hill the last time.
Gillies had been riding Kildary King hard only halfway through the race to stay in touch with the body of the field.
Kildary King looks a shadow of his former self, having tailed the field at his previous start at Ellerslie.
Appropriately, Michelle Hopkins won the Candy washing Machine for being the leading jumps rider through the Ellerslie carnival.
Going into Saturday's meeting Craig Thornton was the only rider with enough points to overhaul Hopkins, and did a reasonable job by winning the McGregor Grant, but he ran out of opportunities without a ride in the later hurdle race.
Racing: Youngsters brighten future for jumps
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