HE'S THE ULTIMATE FULLY TESTED BUT IS GOOD ENOUGH TO LAND THE ODDS IN A PRESSURED FINISH

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, March 22, 2023

He’s The Ultimate, a four-year-old gelding having his third start since transferring to trainer David Vandyke from the Peter Moody stable, scored a hard-fought win under the steadying burden on 59kg when he prevailed in a Class 3 Handicap over 1640m at Doomben on March 22.

The son of Fastnet Rock had finished in fourth and sixth place in his previous two starts for the Vandyke stable, but those runs came after an eleven month break from race action so they really translated into a race fitness building exercise and so he was expected to show progressive improvement here, but his resolve was really testing in a driving finish.

He’s The Ultimate, who jumped as the second favourite at $3.90, was comfortably away at the break and duly settled in a reasonably close-up fourth placing, just a little over two lengths off the leader, Greek Star ($8.50), in the early part of the race.

Saving ground throughout, Ryan Maloney eased He’s The ultimate up into third place as the runners took the sweep to the home turn. He was still those two lengths behind Greek Star on straightening with the favourite Moveitmoveit ($3.30) to his outside, threatening to keep He’s The Ultimate in a pocket.

While He’s The Ultimate was briefly held up for a run, others on the outside of the leaders were free to make their move and the $18 outsider Exolay made the most of that opportunity to bound into contention, racing down the centre of the track, so that, by the time Moveitmoveit dropped sway and allowed He’s The ultimate to emerge into clear running approaching the 200m mark, the Vandyke trained runner still had that two length deficit to make up on Greek Star and he now also had to cope with the very real threat of Exolay.

At that stage it looked like He’s The Ultimate might run an unlucky third and that he would have to dig really deep to do any better, but his fighting qualities did indeed kick in as he got the better of Exolay with 50m left to run and then continued his surging finishing effort which saw him cut down the game Greek Star in the very last stride.

The fact that He’s the Ultimate was giving Greek Star 3.5kg at the weights and that he had been held up at a vital stage in the straight, underlines the quality of the win.

He’s The Ultimate won three times in eleven starts for Peter Moody and this latest success takes his overall race record to four wins from fourteen starts with the first prize of $21 000 taking his overall earning through the $100 000 barrier mark to $117 450 banked in prizemoney.

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