The leader of the ‘Blue Army’ Trekking produced giant strides at the end of the 1400m to wins the 2019 Group 1 $1.5m Stradbroke Handicap at Eagle Farm today.
Trekking, above, was too good for the opposition to record a comfortable win in the 2019 Stradbroke Handicap at Eagle Farm. Photo by Steve Hart.
Trekking was one of four James Cummings trained runners to carry the famous Godolphin royal blue colours in the Stradbroke Handicap and careered away over the concluding stages to record a very dominant win.
In-form jockey Kerrin McEvoy produced another top shelf ride on Trekking to claim his second Group 1 win for the day after steering Prince Fawaz to victory in the $600,000 Magic Millions J.J. Atkins Plate (1600m) for James Cummings’ father Anthony.
McEvoy settled Trekking midfield from barrier eight and had him in the clear on the home turn for an uninterrupted run to the line to record a one and three quarter lengths win over the Toby Edmonds trained Tyzone ($8) who ran the race of his life to find the runner’s up stall while Endless Drama ($11) was running on again to finish third.
Trekking was always steady in the betting and started as the $7 equal favourite in a wide betting affair while the second pick The Bostonian ($8) was never in the hunt after missing the start and came in in eleventh place.
“Dad set the benchmark pretty high there with his colt winning the J.J. Atkins,” James Cummings said.
“On Brisbane’s feature race day and turn up here to have Trekking and our other horses in really good shape.”
“This horse has just had a gun prep. He could have done more in Sydney in the Autumn but we held him back knowing that he has a real pension for the dryer tracks.”
“And having said that the track here is a little different, it plays that little differently than Sydney. So while I think he ran well a couple of weeks ago, he only just got his confidence again on it.”
Trekking showed that he was up to Group 1 racing with a fighting third to The Bostonian in the $700,000 Kingsford-Smith Cup (1300m) at Eagle Farm a fortnight ago and then impressed Cummings with a slick gallop on the Eagle Farm course proper on Tuesday morning.
“During the week we were able to give him another look here and we really wanted to see him work well and he did that,” Cummings said.”
“He really worked in the style of a horse that was ready to fire big time today.”
The other three Cummings runners were scattered through the rest of the field with Viridine ($8) finishing sixth, Encryption ($31) tenth and Home Of The Brave ($13) failed to beat a runner home in the seventeen horse Stradbrojke Handicap field.
