IOLITE DEFENDS UNBEATEN RECORD

By Graham Potter | Friday, December 11, 2020

It might not raise many eyebrows when you hear that a horse has run a track record at the country track at Kilcoy, but when you hear that horse has actually smashed the track record by a whopping 1.21 seconds you do take a second glance … and that is how you end up looking at the form of the Natalie McCall trained three-year-old gelding Iolite.

Iolite will go into today’s QTIS Three-Year-Old Handicap at Doomben with a perfect record having won two races from two starts. He cruised in on debut in a Maiden over 1000m at the Sunshine Coast (when winning by 2.80 lengths) and then followed up with that Kilcoy run over 1050m in which he hardly flexed a muscle in lowering the track record time.

“We had expectations of a good run on debut,” said McCall. “We know he goes pretty good. He had a jump-out on the Tuesday before he raced and he killed them. I mean he won very easily. He was only there to have a soft trial that day and we knew he had plenty of improvement from that trial.

“We know that he likes to lead but that night he drew awkwardly, and I wasn’t sure if he could get across quick enough to lead … but he showed he is pretty quick.

“Kilcoy, again … well, I didn’t take too much notice of the time but when I went to pick the colours up one of the stewards said, ‘I see you’ve run a track record.’ I said, ‘oh righto’ and then I went home and had a look at it and saw that he had taken 1.2 seconds out of it.

“I thought that was pretty good seeing he never got out of second gear.

“He has probably come through that run better than he did his first one,” continued McCall.

“Doomben will be a good test for him. He has drawn a bit badly for that 1050m start at Doomben so he will have to quick again. We’ll just leave that to Jimmy (Orman – who has been on Iolite in all starts to date) and see what happens.

“It’s all a learning process for all concerned. It’s a bit hard to learn too much about them when they are that much better than their rivals … which he has been up to now … so it is good to put them up against something a bit better and see how they go.

“No matter what he does tomorrow, he’ll be aimed at the QTIS Jewel … that will be his main goal.”

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