NO CIGAR, BUT KEEFY SCORES A HIGHLY CREDITABLE RESULT IN THE $1 MILLION BONDI STAKES

By Graham Potter | Saturday, October 23, 2021

After finishing second in both the Garden City Guineas over 1600m at Toowoomba on September 21 and a Class 3 Handicap over 1600m at the Sunshine Coast on October 8, Keefy headed south, leaving the David Vandyke stable to join the Hawksbury yard of trainer Brian Widdup.

The immediate target for Keefy was no less than a $1 million race, the Bondi Stakes over 1600m at Randwick on October 23, and the performance in that race of the All Too Hard gelding showed both the good order in which he had been delivered to Widdup by David Vandyke and also how well Widdup had carried on that good work.

Keefy, who was ridden by Jay Ford, was unwanted in the betting at $21, with most of the runner’s prices being exaggerated due to the presence of a relatively short-priced favourite in the form of the Group 2 Stan Fox winner Hilal ($2.35).

Ford and Keefy weren’t going to die wondering though!

Ford pushed Keefy through in-between runners early to settle in second place, two lengths off Dufresne ($9.50) and five lengths ahead of Hilal, who was slow into stride. Keefy held his position comfortably until the home turn where Ford started applying pressure to the leader.

It was a bit of a slog early in the straight but, at the 200m Keefy did take the measure of Dufrense. Keefy’s problem though was that Hilal was now closing in at full speed after being switched out wide for a run by Tommy Berry … and it soon became clear that Hilal was finishing the best of all but, even when he was headed by the favourite, Keefy kept on fighting the good fight, as he does, staying on strongly to the line to hold onto a highly credible second place.

Such was the level of prize-money in the race that the runner-up result put $190 000 in Keefy’s prize-money account, taking his overall earnings to $244 750 … and this, after only eight starts.

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