The change of surface from turf to the polytrack at Fairview on Friday flipped the Listed Milkwood Stakes landscape on its head on Friday.
Paris Lass (Calvin Habib) marked her first stakes success holding off Three Rocks (Richard Fourie) and Gimme’s Lassie (Craig Zackey) at Fairview (Pic – Pauline Herman)
The R150 000 1000m feature went from the straight on turf, to the poly on the turn, and produced a 14-1 upset in the shape of Paris Lass who sent from gun to tape under Calvin Habib, and stayed on resolutely to beat the 5-4 favourite Three Rocks by three quarters of a length in a time of 56,37 secs.
Gimme’s Lassie (10-1) is threatening to win soon after her transfer from the Cape, and stayed on a neck away in third.
The lightly raced Paris Lass was marking her first stakes success and had registered 2 of her first 3 victories on the all-weather. She was never headed after grabbing the advantage from her 4 draw.
In view of the polytrack fields being restricted to 12 horses, Princess Deb’s and Symbol Of Love were eliminated.
The winner is a R50 000 Cape Yearling Sale graduate, and has now won 4 races with 3 places from 9 starts for stakes of R282 463.
Bred by Lammerskraal Stud, she is a daughter of Visionaire (Grand Slam) out of the five-time winning Western Winter mare, French Lass.
Paris Lass was one of five winners on the afternoon for Gavin Smith, which included the Hollywood Syndicate’s century in the final race when Craig Zackey booted Jade’s Caberneigh home, which earned a bonus of R10 000 each for the winning jockey and trainer, R2 000 for her Groom Sandisele ‘No Man’ Mpumlwana, and R2 500 each for the two commentators, Nico Kritsiotis (TV) and Naqeeb Munshi (On-course).
