No Triple Crown Victory For First Lady

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The First Lady was served sour grapes on Sunday as the thoroughbred failed in her bid to become only the second horse to win the Antigua Turf Club’s Triple Crown Series, crashing to defeat in the third and final leg of the series, the Governor General’s Cup, at the Cassada Garden’s Race Track.
Having previously won both the Black Pineapple Stakes and the Sir Dr Cuthwin Lake instalments of the annual series, The First Lady needed only to win Sunday’s race to complete her hattrick but was stopped in her bid by Scrumpum who won the race in record time and claimed the $10,000.00 winner’s prize.
Trainer for The First Lady and President of the turf club Neil Cochrane, said that something obviously went wrong during the race despite having adequately prepared the horse leading into the decider.
“Something went totally wrong and it doesn’t matter how great a horse you have and it does not matter how good you have prepared your horse and how confident you feel. In horse racing you need a little bit of what is called racing luck and the right trip and we didn’t get the right trip yesterday [Sunday],” he said.
“We would have had several scenarios and I instructed the jockey based upon the gate position that [we] pulled and my advice to him was to try and get around them and tuck into the center of the track and let the horses that want to go, go. We wanted to have the slowest possible race and I said to him [the jockey] the slower the race, the better it is for us to win,” he added.
Scrumpum won the anticipated showdown in a time of 1 minute and 58 seconds, two seconds faster than the previous record holder and still the lone Triple Crown champion, Demolition Man.
Scrumpum’s trainer, Devon O’Garro, said the early pace set by The First Lady actually worked in his horse’s favour as he knew that it would have been impossible for his adversaries to hold that pace for the entire 9.5 furlongs.
Scrumpum [the jockey] was instructed to slow the race down because that is what we had to do and this race was on the right pace and right position which worked out good for us. I knew our chances would have been better because there was no way that horse could have come back around in the second lap at the speed she was traveling,” the trainer said.
“She was really going too fast so I wasn’t worried about her going away too far because I knew she was definitely going too fast,” he added.
Jerry Roberts, owner of Demolition Man, which was scratched just before the start of the Governor General’s Cup on Sunday, commended Scrumpum and its camp for what he believes was an outstanding job.
“Neil had the material to get the job done but what should not be overlooked is the horse that actually won the race and the time that he won it in shows that he may just be better that anybody else on the island because he ran the race two seconds faster than any previous time that distance has been run,” he said.
Robert’s U Better Believe It, finished third behind of The First Lady in the feature contest.
Other winners on Sunday were False Assessment in race number one, Pay Me D Money in race number two, Boobe Alley in race number three, Fresh Milk in race number four and Sir Whiskey in race number 5.

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