Fortuna Five Year Old RED ROVER surges to a 2nd victory in Singapore
RED ROVER (O’Reilly – Pin Up) showed that his last start win was no fluke when he ran out a dominant winner in the Class 4 1000m event on the Polytrack at Singapore’s Kranji Race Course. A winner at Rosehill in April 2018 before being acquired by Fortuna to race in Singapore, RED ROVER had had three previous starts in Singapore for a 3rd, a 2nd and a win in August 2019. Spelled at that point by Trainer Mark Walker, the Waikato Stud bred gelding had returned to work in great order and his track gallop on Wednesday was top class.
Sent out an odds on favourite by punters, they and the horse’s connections had their hearts in their mouths when the usual quick beginning RED ROVER was a tad slow out of the barriers. Rider Azahar Ismail did not panic however, urging the horse up into a mid field, three wide with cover position, then giving him a bit of a breather behind a very hot pace being set by race leader, XXX. On turning RED ROVER was in 4th position but looking ominous, Azahar got him balanced up and, sprinting strongly down the middle of the track, soon gobbled the leading horses up and went to the line 3 lengths clear of the 2nd horse.
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Fortuna Syndications Director, John Galvin, watching the race on TV from his New Zealand home, expressed a high degree of satisfaction with RED ROVER’s record to date. “No question the Mark Walker and I plus the syndicate members took a punt on this horse when we acquired him as he did have a wind issue which required surgery, however he was a bargain purchase, clearly has a lot of ability and now the punt is paying off for us all,” he said.
The veteran rider, Azahar, who has ridden RED ROVER in all of his Singapore races, pulled no punches in his assessment of the horse, “He was very fresh today and was away slowly, but he is a big powerful, speedy type who will have no difficulty being competitive in Class 3 and possibly even higher,” he said.
The victory chalked up Te Akau Trainer Mark Walker’s 69th victory for the season, 21 clear of his nearest rival with just two months of the Singapore racing season to go. A Premiership training victory would represent Walker’s 8thPremiership title (5 in New Zealand and 2 previously in Singapore). For Walker and Galvin, the success could not have come at a better time as both men are currently attending the Magic Millions Horses in Training Sale on the Gold Coast with the aim of buying a couple of Two Year Olds to be contenders for the very lucrative AusHorse Two Year Old Series run in Singapore between February and July 2020. Walker said, “John Galvin and I go back a long way, we have had a lot of success over the years both in New Zealand and Singapore and of late, particular success with tried horses we have been buying out of Australia, as was the case with Red Rover”
RED ROVER was acquired at a Gavel House online auction for NZ$15,000 and is now nudging S$70,000 in Singapore winnings from just four race day starts. He is raced by The Fortuna Red Rover Syndicate, an ownership group of 42 individuals from New Zealand, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Several of the Ownership Group were on course to celebrate the victory, including Hong Kong resident Derek Fong, who celebrated his first victory with Fortuna with his first ever Fortuna runner.