What a day we had at Southwell yesterday with Duke of Luckley winning in emphatic style under a super postitive ride from Freddie. Owners of Duke called it his “Gold Cup” and the outsider of the field bounced back to top form, aged 9, after 223 days off the track and putting his last three pulled up runs far behind him. Also far behind him were the four others in the race whose jockeys had to explain to the Stewards why they allowed Freddie & Duke such an easy lead!
We’ve had Duke since he was a foal, sourced by Gerry Hogan in Ireland where he stayed with PJ Colville until he came over to us as a three year old and was backed and ridden away at Martin Jones’ Redmarley base before coming to us. What fun he’s given us all too and especially at Southwell which his record is now even better than it was yesterday morning – 1321111!
His first run of the season is often his best as he runs so well fresh although he’d had a pipe opener at Kempton Park recently when he galloped with Teleleo who came out and won his bumper on debut so a worthwhile trip. No doubt he was sent off the outsider of the field due to pulling up on his final three starts last season and the fact he’s not finished a race since last July, however he has seemed well at home so I was convinced we didn’t need to be mentioning the ‘retirement’ word but just needed Duke to back me up! That he did and although it’s older horses like him that are helped with us taking Freddie’s 5lb allowance off, Duke would have won yesterday without it having won by 15 lengths!
Duke needs plenty of TLC to keep his wheels on the road so a huge thank you to our farrier, Nick Partridge who keeps him sound fitting special shoes, our physios Maggie Turner and Hannah Steedman giving him regular physio and our team here where he is a real favourite – a big team effort.