ADELAD TOUGHS IT OUT TO LAND HIS FIRST CAREER WIN

By Graham Potter | Thursday, February 16, 2023

The two-year-old colt Adelad put his name on the scoreboard with a win in a QTIS Two-Year-Old Handicap over 1200m at Ipswich on February 16 in only his third career start.

The son of Adelaide was third favourite at $3.80 in a race the betting suggested would be a very open and competitive contest with three of the seven runners starting at odds of less than $4. (Delarenta, who had finished third at Doomben on debut, was the $2.60 favourite with Storm Force Ten, who was having his first run here, on the next line of betting at $3.60).

For his part, Adelad had already showed to good advantage back when he contested the first two-year-old race of the season in Queensland, the Pat O’Shea Plate over 1000m, on his home track at Toowoomba where he finished a close-up second to Bedaub.

He was put away after that by the Tony and Maddysen Sears training partnership before coming back to trial on January 10 ... after which he resumed, finishing fourth QTIS Two-Year-Old Handicap over 1200m at a Saturday Metropolitan meeting at the Sunshine Coast on January 28.

His next assignment was this Ipswich run here, where he showed enough natural progression from his first-up effort to be able to account for his six rivals, although his followers would have been watching proceedings quite closely in the early part as Ben Thompson allowed Adelad all the time he needed to settle into stride and find his own comfortable rhythm.

That strategy took Adelad back to second last, sixth of the seven runners, and some five lengths off the leader in the early part.

Approaching the 500m mark, Thompson decided to set Adelad on his way and he quickly made up ground, travelling three wide, in the sweep to the home turn.

Adelad still had two lengths to make up on straightening and, with the leader Gold ‘N’ Glamorous ($15) kicking on and the favourite Delarenta ducking to the inside and threatening to arrive on the scene with meaning, Thompson had to ride hard all the way down the straight and Adelad had to respond ... which he did ... in spite of being slightly inconvenienced early in the straight when Storm Force Ten shifted out marginally off the heels of Gold ‘N’ Glamorous.

The race was ultimately only decided in Adelad’s favour inside the final 75m where the Sears trained runner finally headed Gold ‘N’ Glamorous with Thompson still having no time to relax though, as Adelad did show a touch of inexperience when wanting to hang in over the final 100m.

This was a good, tough win, given both the amount of ground Adelad had to make up from behind and the amount of ground he had to cover when chasing up wide ... not to mention the ‘fight’ he had to show in what was a fairly highly pressured finish.

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