A Cruise! Beach Beauty (Sean Cormack) comes home lonely to win the Drill Hall Stakes
Dennis Drier’s high class Dynasty mare Beach Beauty came out fighting fresh off her Met third placed finish to win the R350 000 Gr2 Drill Hall Stakes run over 1400m at Greyville on Saturday. She certainly looks like one for the Champions Season notebook after this effort.
It is interesting to observe that all four of the top finishers in this hotly contested event came in here directly off their 2013 J&B Met efforts, and their forward efforts are both an indicator of their class and ability, as that of their trainer’s skills.
With the late withdrawal of Divine Jet, Bielorruso led the stampede from Always Al, Viva Maria and the beautiful almost white Occhi Di Lupo wide out.
At this point Beach Beauty was relaxed some ten lengths off and going well.
Into the straight they fanned out, with many staking claims. At the 300m marker though it was patently obvious that nothing was going better than the Drier mare who scythed through in dazzling fashion.
Beach Beauty, who started at 18 to 10, cruised in to win by 1,75 lengths in a time of 82,15 secs.
Dennis Drier trained the winner, who was ridden by her usual pilot Sean Cormack.
Garth Puller’s Ice Machine ran a cracker in second after suffering soundness issues during his Cape campaign, while Vaughan Marshall will be thrilled by the storming late effort of Hill Fifty Four over a distance short of his best.
The recently gelded Run For It looked menacing charging through the middle, and Justin Snaith may just yet have some fun with the mercurial son of Dynasty.He finished a good fourth under Robbie Fradd.
The story of how Beach Beauty’s ownership, the Shanks Syndicate, came to being, has been covered in these pages previously, but nevertheless makes for good recounting.
Back in the early 1990’s John Bescoby had spare tickets for a race meeting.
He offered them to his staff. At the particular race day, a young lady named Ruth met Trevor Armitage’s son. They courted and married and had three daughters named Kate, Hannah and Juliette.
Sadly Trevor’s son died and friends got together to form a syndicate in honour of his memory.
In his varsity days the young man’s nick name was shanks (apparently after the sanitary ware Armitage Shanks).
Beach Beauty, named by his daughter Kate, is the syndicate’s first horse. The silks are based on the colouring of his favourite bird, the narina trogon.
Bred by Trevor Armitage, Beach Beauty is by Dynasty out of the three-time winning Capture Him mare, Sun Coast.
Beach Beauty has run 21 times for 11 wins and 7 places.
She took her earnings to R2 456 203 and besides the season ahead, she looks to be a terrific broodmare in the making, despite her obvious lack of bulk.
