There is always a little luck in racing, and when you take advantage of it the way Private Eye has in the past month, it pays dividends.
The Everest runner-up wasn’t even in that race when he charged down the Flemington 1200m straight a month ago to win the Gilgai Stakes, but an injury to Snapdancer opened the Inglis slot for a big payday. The natural progression was to a booming Nature Strip Stakes victory at Rosehill on Saturday.
Brenton Avdulla on Private Eye wins the Nature Strip Stakes at Rosehill.Credit:Getty
“This race was always important, with an eye to the Champions Mile next week, in how we were thinking,” trainer Joe Pride said. “But if you’d said to me he would run second in The Everest and win like that in this race, I would have thought you were dreaming. You can get luck but have to be good enough to take it – and he was.”
Private Eye stormed down the outside to win the Nature Strip, running away from Mazu by 1-1/4 lengths. Kementari was a half-length back in third.
For Pride, it was a moment that showed his horse’s versatility, after winning the Epsom last year and a luckless second in the Stradbroke during the winter. He has gone to a new level this preparation.
“I knew he had come back good when he won at Flemington,” Pride said. “The Everest was amazing, but that was his best ever win, and we still have the race we were aiming at the beginning of the spring to come [the Champions Mile] next week.
“He just does things other horses can’t do. He has won a big sprint today, an Epsom at a mile, and I think he could get out to 2000m.”
The key to Private Eye is a dry surface, where he can absorb high speed and produce a scintillating finish.
“We were stiff not to win the Stradbroke, it was pilot error, but then Joe put me back on him and he’s been awesome,” jockey Brenton Avdulla said. “He was awesome in The Everest and although today was a $3 million race, it was probably just a run to get him to the mile next week. You can just see how explosive he is.
“It’s just crazy how good he is on top of the ground. He just takes 50m to build through his gears but, once you get serious with him, he just lets go.”
He left the beaten brigade with no excuses, but trainer Peter Snowden had the consolation of winning $2.5 million for taking out the Sydney Sprint Series with the Triple Crown-owned Mazu.
“I would have rather won the race, but that’s good,” Snowden said. “He just got caught up on the fence a little and didn’t see the other coming. He will go for a spell and get ready for next year.”
