News

Prayers answered as million-dollar colt lives up to his name at trials

22nd Dec 2010

Sydney Morning Herald - Chris Roots & Andrew Eddy - Wednesday, 22 December 2010

ONCE in a while there comes a horse for which you hope everything will go right - and two-year-old Godspeed is definitely that type of racehorse.

Trainer Gerald Ryan sent the $1,875,000 Inglis Easter Yearling Sale topper to the barrier trials at Rosehill yesterday as planned and the Redoute's Choice-Regrowth colt did the job as hoped, winning his first public hit-out.

''That will keep a lot of people happy,'' said Ryan after the easy 2½ -length trial win over 900 metres. ''You're always a bit worried when you go to a trial, especially when he had only the one real hit-out before it. What surprised me about it was the ease he did it in and, hopefully, he will improve and go forward from it.''

Advertisement: Story continues below Godspeed will have his first race start over 1100m at Rosehill on January 15, when he will share the spotlight with Magic Millions day, and then be prepared for April's Golden Slipper. ''The thing with this bloke is everything has gone to plan - that doesn't happen too often,'' Ryan said. ''He could have gone to the early two-year-old trials but [we] picked out this day. We have got through it, next is the 15th of January, then he will have three weeks off on the water-walker and come back for two runs before the Slipper.''

Godspeed wasn't the quickest two-year-old of the morning, that title went to Chris Waller's Grift in 54.99 seconds, but his 55.64s was enough to impress Tim Clark. "He's pretty much a push-button ride,'' Clark said. "He wasn't great away but then showed good acceleration to take it up and travelled beautiful until I asked him for an effort.'' Meanwhile group1-winning colt Toorak Toff is expected to be sold for up to $10 million soon to one of the large Hunter Valley studs after his surprise retirement from the racetrack yesterday.

Trainer and managing part-owner Rick Hore-Lacy confirmed that the colt had run its last race after being diagnosed with a throat condition called ''roaring''. He said his fellow part-owners, which include his brother, Dyson, had decided to retire the horse rather than risk an operation.

''I had been concerned that he'd been making a little noise but on Saturday he made a bit more noise and so I asked [equine throat specialist] Dr Alastair MacLean to look him over this morning,'' Hore-Lacy said. ''He said he was a grade-four roarer and said he could undergo an operation much like So You Think apparently did earlier in the year, but he's such a valuable horse we thought it best to retire him and look ahead to the new stud season for him.''

Toorak Toff won the Golden Rose in August before being a luckless fourth as equal favourite in the group1 Caulfield Guineas.