The Lammerskraal Stud-bred Visionaire filly Paris Lass made it back-to-back wins to crown the Hollywoodbets-sponsored Gavin Smith exacta with the more fancied Gimme’s Lassie in the R150 000 Listed Milkwood Stakes at Fairview on Friday.
Interestingly, the same racemeeting a year ago was also switched from the turf to the polytrack.
Gavin Smith Racing 1-2! Stallone Naidoo keeps Paris Lass going to hold off Gavin Lerena and Gimme’s Lassie (Pic – Pauline Herman)
While it’s never ideal to have racemeetings switch surfaces, and that is underscored not only by stakeholder frustrations and the 15 related withdrawals, it can work for the poly specialists and Paris Lass’ shares soared as she flashed her speed in style to register a fourth all-weather victory from her five firsts.
Beautifully ridden by a delighted Stallone Naidoo, Paris Lass (20-1) led practically all the way to hold off a serious late challenge from Gavin Smith stablemate Gimme’s Lassie (5-1) to register a half length title defence in a time of 56,44 secs for the 1000m.
“I rode her in work a week ago and I knew she’s back to where she should be,” quipped Stallone Naidoo.
Assistant trainer Dean Smith thanked owner ‘uncle’ Carlos Goncalves and said the 1000m on the all-weather was a touch on the short side for Gimme’s Lassie, who was not disgraced in second.
The Candice Bass-Robinson trained Trip To Maputo (2-1) went off tote favourite, despite the surface switch, and ran a good third, a head behind her former Milnerton stablemate, Gimme’s Lassie.
Raced by Carlos Goncalves, the winner is a R50 000 Cape Yearling Sale graduate, and has now won 5 races with 4 places from 15 starts for stakes of R393 738.
Bred by Lammerskraal Stud, she is a daughter of Visionaire (Grand Slam) out of the five-time winning Western Winter mare, French Lass.
In a sad twist, Porque Te Vas fell heavily unseating Mpume Mjoka after about 300m. We believe that Mjoka is stable but no word was available on the Mike Stewart-trained mare at time of writing.
