Jay Bee Gee post race
- The Annual Amberley fixture was promoted with a Mid-Winter Christmas theme and was run in true wintery conditions the day following the shortest day. 43 mm of rain in the lead up ensured a Heavy10 track with a penetrometer reading of 5.0.
- Hunterville trainer Adrian Bull travelled a team of three south headed by Winning Edge Presentations Winter Cup bound JAY BEE GEE. The six-year-old grey, a last start runner in November’s New Zealand Cup, rewarded an outstanding training effort by Bull to run out an easy winner of the Greenwood Amberley Cup. Three lengths was the margin over LEITRIM LAD and AOTEA LAD. Making a welcomed return to Riccarton Park was winning jockey Kelly Myers.
- Evergreen Winton sprinter MIDNIGHT RUNNER finished resolutely to lump a clear topweight home in the Daphne Bannan Memorial open sprint. Apprentice Ruvanesh Muniandy scored his first Riccarton Park winner for trainer John Phillips. The rising ten-year-old now has 11 wins and 18 seconds from his 64 starts.
- New Plymouth trainer Robbie Patterson was keen to win the Bain McCall Memorial Two-year-old having sheared with Bain in an earlier race. Bain’s sons and assorted family members sponsor the race to remember honour and remember him with a racing “Boys Trip” each year. But it was not to be with the favourite having to bow to the locally trained IMPTEE. Ironically Patterson’s apprentice, Lemmy Douglas, rode IMPTEE for Danny Crozier.
- Robbie did get a winner on the trip with CATHERINENZ beating DEEP BEAUTY and ZACAT in the Optimise Fertilisers & Equi-Lise Rating 75.
- Donovan Cooper joined Yogesh Atachamah on 22 wins to share the lead in the South Island apprentice race by 1 win over Denby-Rose Tait. He won race 5 aboard the Robyn Ayton trained TELLME YOU LOVEME.
- All eight races were won by different trainers and jockeys.Jay Bee