GSCT MAY 08 - SPIRIT OF BOOM GETS THE JOB DONE

By Graham Potter and Matthew Grimson | Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Gold Coast, May 8, 2010.
Track - Slow 6. Rail - out 0.5m.
Ken Russell Memorial Classic (2yo Plate - Set Weights) - 1200m.
Time: 1-11.28. (Carrying 56kg).
1 Spirit of Boom; 2 Adebisi; 3 Jypsiere.

On April 24 trainer Tony Gollan landed a city double at Eagle Farm when the ‘boom brothers’, Spirit Of Boom and Temple Of Boom won their respective races.

Well, to be accurate, they are half-brothers. The two-year-old Spirit of Boom is sired by Sequalo while the three-year-old Temple Of Boom is by Piccolo, but the important common denominator is the broodmare Temple Spirit who is the mother of both of these Gollan trained runners.

On Saturday at the Gold Coast Spirit Of Boom and Temple Of Boom tried to repeat their double winning act, and the stable came within a long neck of doing so. Spirit Of Boom got home by a short-head and the dream of a second successive double for the duo only ended in the final two strides of the sixth race when Beethog trumped Temple Of Boom in the shadow of the post.

For Spirit Of Boom it was another hard-fought, nail-biting victory.

Jumping from an unfavourable number twelve barrier draw, Spirit Of Boom was held out wide on the track throughout the running. Jockey Stathi Katsidis placed the colt in seventh position in the early part as he set his sights on trailing Audacious Spirit and his market rival Adebesi into the race.

The Desleigh Forster trained Adebesi had drawn one place inside Spirit Of Boom and had gone forward at the break to contest the lead with Jypsiere while Audacious Spirit raced just off the speed, behind and to the outside of those two runners and Wild Promises who was holding down third spot along the inside.

That trail led Spirit Of Boom up to fourth place, swinging four wide, on the approach to the turn. Wild Promises had weakened out of it and that left Spirit Of Boom right on the heels of Jypsiere (on the rails) and Adebesi (two out) and Audacious Spirit (three wide) as the field straightened for home.

The Bryan Guy trained Jypsiere, who was only having his second career start following his cakewalk Maiden win, underlined his prowess by kicking in strongly early in the straight. Adebesi was momentarily outpaced and he suddenly was a length in arrears. Audacious Spirit was only whacking away in third while Spirit Of Boom wasn’t helping his cause by wanting to run in early in the straight.

With 200m left to run, it appeared to be race in two as Jypsiere kept fighting, but he was now finding the larger Adebesi an intimidating presence as the latter refused to go away. At that stage Spirit Of Boom was all of three-and-a-half lengths off the action and that deficit was in danger of becoming too big a task.

But both Spirit Of Boom and Stathi Katsidis refused to surrender.

The colt’s talent kicked in exactly when it was needed and, although he still wanted to run in, Spirit Of Boom’s challenge gradually built momentum.

With 100m Spirit Of Boom was a length-and-a-half behind the duelling duo up front. Jypsiere was still fighting tooth and nail, but Adebesi was just about to claim the advantage. Adebesi did just that in the shadow of the post, but he in turn had to give best to the flying Spirit Of Boom who Katsidis lifted in the last few stride to earn the decision.

The first time Spirit Of Boom was in front was on the line. Finishes don’t come more finely timed than that!

The connections of the luckless Adebesi went away with the consolation of knowing that they have a horse who is good enough to go to better things. The same applies to Jypsiere whose sterling effort from the front makes him one for the notebook.

WINNER FEEDBACK
Trainer Tony Gollan: “He tries his heart out this fella. He’s still doing a fair few things wrong and he’s still winning so it’s very pleasing.

“He pulled up outstanding, him and his brother (Temple f Boom, after they both won on the same day at Eagle Farm on April 24). I haven’t had one problem with them in a fortnight. I was confident getting here today. He’s still improving this fella and we’ll be a bit more confident in two more weeks.

“Actually at the top of the straight I thought it would get pretty tight because they tell me in these short races the fence would be better than being out there. He always toughs in for a fight this fella and he’s very honest.

“Always happy to have Stathi (Katsidis) on. He rides more 11 out of 10 than he does 1 out of 10 that’s for sure.

We are going to go to the Champagne at Doomben in two weeks ... and then it’s all over for the carnival for him.

If all goes well, in the spring we’ll probably be looking at starting him in the San Dominico and maybe even seeing how it goes from there. We’ll just get the winter over with first.

He’s a Magic Millions horse so we might come back here in the summer. We’ll see what happens.”

Jockey Stathi Katsidis: “There is a lot of improvement in him. He’s green. He’s all over the place. In the run he was trying to go a little bit hard and then he was all over the place. He’s sort of still got a lot to learn. He’s doing it on raw ability at the moment, you know, but he’s got great scope.

“No, it wasn’t easy from the draw. I was three deep with cover, but I was sort of happy in the run.

“He took a long time to get there in the straight. He ducked in at the 100 at a vital point. I thought he might have cost himself the race.

“He was going to win, like by a half length or so, and at the 100 he just wanted to duck in, so I just had to grab hold of him ... stop, straighten him and balance him up again and I didn’t know if he’d get going again quick enough to win. But he did, full credit to the horse. He just picked himself up and launched at them and got the money.”

Trainer Tony Gollan gave some interesting insight into the respective characters of the Spirit Of Boom and Temple Of Boom.

Gollan: “They are both probably as similar as they are different if that makes any sense. They are both very nice horses to have in the stable. They are crackers and that all comes back to their mother (Temple Spirit). When I trained her she was a beautiful mare to have in the stable.

“She won seven or eight out of fifteen. She was a nice mare. She won $150000 with limited preparations. She was only by Special Dane. He wasn’t a fashionable sire at the time.

Both horses (Spirit Of Boom and Temple Of Boom) are a pleasure to train. Both showed us pretty early in their lives they were going to be nice horses and as they get older they are probably going to get better. Both showed up well as two-year-olds and so people obviously labelled them as speedy two-year-old squib type horses, but knowing the family a little bit and knowing the two horses I know they are going to get better as they go along.

“Temple Of Boom was never prepared for the big Magic Millions race as a two-year-old. He surprised me when he trounced his field in the Magic Millions Prelude a week before Magic Millions day last year and so, by design, he wasn’t ready to run in the big one.

“He never had best constitution as a young horse. He’s starting to get a constitution now. He races and he eats up and he is doing the things that you want him to do.”

The two-year-old (Spirit Of Boom) ... he has always felt like a nice horse. I’ve always sort of been excited about him.

“The Magic Millions was a disaster. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. In the first hundred meters of the race our sort of dream for the day was shot, you know. That was all part and parcel of racing, but it was good to see that horse in particular come back so well at Eagle Farm.

“He still did a fair few things wrong at Eagle Farm. He actually got through a fair bit of bumping to actually get a victory.

“The week after that run he knew he’d had a victory the horse. After the Magic Millions day he was a beaten-up sort of horse. He was bruised and battered. There were no injuries or anything like that but he was down and you could see it in his attitude.

“The week after the Eagle Farm win he was a bright horse all week. I knew the race would take something out of him, but by Tuesday he was bouncing. The confidence he got out of that run ... you know, not just winning, but how he had to win as well.

“I felt he was never comfortable in the ground. He was hot off the bridle. Down the back-straight the ground was pretty wet. He struggled. He was semi-comfortable down the straight, but he never travelled the horse in the run so the win was better than it looked.

“He dug in good because when he got to the front he pricked his ears and he wanted to stop. He thought he had done his job. He hung on. He only spotted the second horse late, a few strides past the post, and he picked the bit up and went again.

“Temple Of Boom was right the day after his Eagle Farm win.

“We are not aiming for the sky or anything like that. We aimed for the early part of the carnival because that is where the races suited these horses. These Gold Coast races were very hard races and they had both to take another step up, which they did.”

HRO asked Gollan, where does the ‘Boom’ in the two runners’ names come into it?

Gollan: “Where it comes in is that one of the guys that’s in the horse, Jeremy Schloss ... I hadn’t had the syndicate finalised for Temple Of Boom ... it was a disaster selling shares in the first one and the second one too to a degree ... but we had to give him a name. I wanted to try him or else I would have to put him out. He’d been in that long it was just going to be a waste, you know.

So Jeremy spoke to some of the syndicate and he gave me a list of about fifty names and they were all horrible. There was this one name, Temple Of Boom ... because he was out of Temple Spirit I suppose ... it was the only name on the page that I even remotely thought had any ring to it.

“I just put it on the paper. I rang them and I said, is the name was available? They said it was. I said, beautiful. I put it down and I sent it in. When I told Colin McAlpine what I’d done he said, what kind of name is that? But then the horse won first-up and the ‘boom’ headlines looked good so he was happy then.”

PRICE FLUCTUATIONS:
Winner (Spirit Of Boom): 3.50 out to 3.80 in to 3.60.
The winner was the favourite.

STEWARDS REPORT EXTRACT:
If It Can It Will (L Cassidy) was slow away. Upon This Rock (M Rodd) which jumped away awkwardly shifted out and made contact with the hindquarters of Wild Promises (M Cahill). Shortly after the start Audacious Spirit (D Browne) shifted in making contact with Spirit Of Boom (S Katsidis).

In the early stages Debut (P Robl) had a tendency to race ungenerously and throw its head about. Also in the early stages Bust 'N' Loose (H Bowman) had a tendency to over-race and proved difficult to settle.

At about the 800m Debut got its head up when awkwardly placed close to the heels of Chloe's Dream (D Griffin). Near the 800m crowding occurred to Upon This Rock, Chloe's Dream (D
Griffin) and Rapid Leica Dane (B Shinn).

It was established that at about this time Audacious Spirit (D Browne) shifted across to a position in front of Spirit Of Boom when clear but then steadied from behind Adebisi (S Scriven).

The interference to the runners previously mentioned was significant however Stewards did not believe that today D Browne (Audacious Spirit) by steadying as he did, had breached the careless riding rule, however he was severely reprimanded and told he should exercise more care than this in future.

At about the 400m Bust 'N' Loose which had been over-racing throughout became unbalanced when close to the heels of Wild Promises which was giving ground.

At about the same time Rapid Leica Dane made the turn awkwardly and shifted out abruptly away from the heels of Spirit Of Boom. As a consequence of this Mundi Gully (D Whitmore) and Upon This
Rock were inconvenienced and obliged to make the turn wide.

Inconvenience was also caused to Paris Blu (M Walker) and Demanding Miss (C Munce). Whilst the interference that occurred was of some significance the Stewards were not able to attribute responsibility to any one rider or riders and accordingly no action was taken. However, all those involved were advised to exercise care at all times.

Near the 300m Jockey L Cassidy (If It Can It Will) dropped his whip.

A post-race veterinary examination of Upon This Rock revealed no apparent abnormalities.

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