Kelvin "N"

?The high­light of Re­pub­lic Bank Day at the races was watch­ing over­whelm­ing favourite, Bruceon­th­eloose, live up to the hype of be­ing the best three-year-old in the West In­dies and win­ning the Der­by by the widest mar­gin in his­to­ry, in near record time. But the day was a banker for thrills and ex­cite­ment and re­al­ly was the one for you. Watch­ing Bruceon­th­eloose write his name in­to the his­to­ry pages as one of the classi­est thor­ough­breds ever to lay hooves at San­ta Rosa Park, in the rich­est and most pres­ti­gious event on the lo­cal rac­ing's cal­en­dar, was some­thing to savour.

John O'Brien's colt will now go for the Caribbean Cham­pi­on Stakes and the Cla­si­co del Caribe in Puer­to Ri­co on De­cem­ber 5. The skill of Wilmer Galviz and his abil­i­ty to keep his com­po­sure af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing some traf­fic prob­lems at the first turn be­fore land­ing the $300,000 first prize cheque was some­thing to be­hold. That per­for­mance was matched on­ly by the cu­mu­la­tive com­pe­ti­tion in the oth­er races on the ten-event pro­gramme. Bruceon­th­eloose stunned the 10,000 plus fans and tur­fites with the ease of his suc­cess, out­class­ing his 12 chal­lengers to win the 76th run­ning of the pres­ti­gious event by a record 15 lengths.

Left: ?Paul Hoo, cen­tre, re­ceives the Re­pub­lic Bank Der­by Tro­phy from An­dre Du­lal White­way, Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, Re­pub­lic Bank. Next to Du­lal-White­way on left is Pres­i­dent of Ari­ma Race Club Ka­ma Ma­haraj. On the right of Hoo is co-own­er Vic­tor Chong.The roan/grey colt by Wheel­away/Road To Jus­tice was giv­ing O'Brien his fourth Der­by suc­cess, while Galviz cel­e­brat­ed his first vic­to­ry in the Run For The Ros­es. O'Brien is now the lead­ing Der­by train­er at the cen­tralised fa­cil­i­ty. How­ev­er, it was the first vic­to­ry for own­ers Tres Ami­gos and their pur­ple and pink silks with pink stars. A de­light­ed O'Brien de­scribed Bruceon­th­eloose as a tremen­dous race­horse. "That was a great per­for­mance," he said, while cred­it­ing Galviz for his fine ride.

Galviz too, was elat­ed. "This was mon­ey in the bank. He is a classy horse and won eas­i­er than the mar­gin sug­gests. We got in­to a bit of traf­fic go­ing to the first turn but he got go­ing near­ing the far turn and from that point, the ques­tion was just how far?" Vic­tor Chong one of the co-own­ers com­ment­ed: "This is a won­der­ful feel­ing. We lost it by a nose in Ja­maica, but we won it by a wider mar­gin here. A Der­by win is a Der­by win any part of the world," he not­ed while Ger­vais Mout­tet, an­oth­er co-own­er stat­ed: "It's a great feel­ing."

In the un­der­card, the Di­a­mond Stakes over 1,350 me­tres, the Glenn Mendez trained Black­stone Street out­ran his op­po­nents to win by 2 1/4 lengths. The Pe­ter Acham owned colt looks a threat to all­com­ers in the top stay­ing events. Pun­ters and tur­fites are ea­ger­ly await­ing the clash be­tween Black­stone Street, Bruceon­th­eloose and Storm Street in the Gold Cup. Train­er Richard Stephen had the first rea­son to cel­e­brate on the day as his USA bred colt Lekh Raj out­classed the op­po­si­tion un­der ap­pren­tice Stan­ley Chadee. The Carl Per­sad owned geld­ing had five 1/2 lengths to spare Ma­jes­tic Gold.

Stephen was again in the win­ner's en­clo­sure when Prince Lara with Christo­pher Hus­bands astride strolled home in the sec­ond. Bul­lion Babe cruised home for O'Brien and Bri­an Boodram­s­ing in the third and O'Brien dou­bled up with Mis­ter Kingston in the fourth. Keis­han Bal­go­b­in made his way in­to the win­ner's en­clo­sure when he land­ed Savvy for train­er Dou­glas Ben­nett and Pavlyn Badrie got his name in the win­ning col­umn when he pi­lot­ed the 59/1 out­sider Un­stop­pable Train to vic­to­ry in the sixth.

There­after, Mendez took the 'Di­a­mond' with Black­stone Street while Shas­tri Singh had to work hard to get up on the line to land Lu Lu's Pride for own­er Juan Navar­ro in the next. Af­ter that, Bruceon­th­eloose took the spot­light with­out break­ing a sweat as Ja­maican hors­es took the top six po­si­tions.

Ari­ma Race Club pres­i­dent, Ka­ma Ma­haraj, de­scribed it as a su­perb day of rac­ing as some $2.4 mil­lion was wa­gered, with $330,000 in­vest­ed in the Der­by. It is a ma­jor in­jec­tion to the in­dus­try. Lo­cal rac­ing has two new he­roes, and fans are al­ready singing the praise to An­dre Du­lal-White­way and Re­pub­lic Bank for what was, un­doubt­ed­ly, one of the best or­gan­ised days for the year.

Thrills on the track cou­pled with the hun­dreds of chil­dren who ac­com­pa­nied their par­ents with pic­nic bas­kets, were all part of Re­pub­lic Bank's fes­tive at­mos­phere. The oc­ca­sion re­vived mem­o­ries of the Christ­mas meet­ing at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, and some­thing which the rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty will be hop­ing will serve as a fil­lip to the in­dus­try.