Gun performance from Etna Rosso
Champion jockey James McDonald described the feeling he got riding Etna Rosso to victory in yesterday’s $160,000 Rosehill Bowling Club Handicap (1600m) in Sydney as “taking a gun to a knife fight.”
“I glanced across to my inside at the 400m and it felt like I was taking a gun to a knife fight,” he said.
“He’s come back in unreal order; he went away a winner and he’s picked up where he left off, and off that performance he’s going to put a few together isn’t he.”
Etna Rosso is in his second season down under, having done his two and three-year-old racing from the stable of Joseph O’Brien, he’s now in the care of champion trainer Chris Waller.
He ended his last preparation with a win at Warwick Farm beating the long-standing track record over 2110m. Following that performance, he was turned out and gelded.
Waller was very pleased with the now five-year-old’s performance and said he would now be aimed towards the $750,000 Gr.1 Metropolitan (2400m) at Randwick on October 5.
“This horse obviously has a pretty bright career, he took his medicine early from the wide draw and set himself up for a good finish and he had them covered a long way from home,” he said.
“I think he’ll get close to a Metropolitan, it’s the right time of the year and he’s got the right profile coming through and that’s where we’ll be heading.”
Go Racing’s General Manager Matt Allnutt was looking forward to the remainder of the season for Etna Rosso who also holds a nomination for the Caulfield Cup.
“James McDonald said that he just feels like a completely different horse,” he said. “He’s got a lot more speed in his legs this prep, he previously took a while to wind into his races but yesterday James just sat quite as mouse, and he went past them very quickly.”
The win capped off another successful international week for the New Zealand-based syndicators who had Mojave River win on debut in France on Thursday.