BONFIRE – FROM GREAT BRITAIN TO GRAFTON

By Graham Potter | Thursday, July 9, 2015

Trainer Gai Waterhouse made it back to back wins in the Grafton Cup when the top weight Bonfire resisted all challenges in the home straight to win by touch over a quarter of a length from the co-favourite Kapour with Shoreham a nose away in third place.

Significantly, this was Bonfire’s first victory in Australia since joining the Waterhouse stable last year.

The horse has unusual story for a Grafton Cup winner.

The son of the German sire Manduro was foaled in Great Britain in 2009. He raced nine times in Britain and France for two victories, including a win in the Group 2 Dante Stakes at York over 2100m as a three-year-old.

That form made him good enough to find a place in the lineup for the 2012 Group 1 Epsom Derby, in which he finished a well beaten sixth behind the then unbeaten winner Camelot, who went on to add the Irish Derby to his list of credits.

Bonfire’s last race in Europe was a second placed finish in Group 3 race in France in October 2013.

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Eight months later Bonfire was trialling at Randwick under Gai Waterhouse’s care.

Another trial and then he was back in race action as three runs followed in August, September and October 2014 with Bonfire finishing second in the Premiers’ Prelude and the Listed Premiers’ Cup (both at Rosehill) and third in the Group 3 Naturalism at Caulfield before ending that preparation with an unplaced run in the Herbert Power, also at Caulfield.

In those runs the distance test had been pushed up along the way from 1800m, to 2000m, to 2400. Bonfire was then tipped out.

Five months later, in March 2015, Bonfire was back in training ... but there was no rush.

Waterhouse gave Bonfire no less than four trials from March through to May this year and, in the process, began to target the Grafton Cup as a logical target.

Bonfire returned first-up in the Hawksbury Cup on June 15, finishing fourth in the 1600m, Group 3 contest. Then it was on to the Winter Cup at Rosehill over 2400m where Bonfire had to settle for second best behind Kapour.

Notably, there was a 5kg turnover in favour of Kapour that day and the Winter Cup was also run on a Heavy 8 track. Both of those factors changed significantly when Bonfire and Kapour came to Grafton.

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In the Grafton Cup Bonfire was 2kg better off with Kapour and the race was run on going listed as a Firm 2.

So it was that Bonfire and Kapour started as equal favourites at $5 for the Cup in which Bonfire showed concentrated focus, a willingness to fight the good fight and the ability on the day to rubber stamp his authority, albeit by a hard fought margin.

That is Bonfire’s Great Britain to Grafton story.

Where it goes from here is an interesting question.

The six-year-old has only raced sixteen times so he could still have scope to raise the bar as he moves along but, for now, he has that Grafton Cup notch on his belt and that, with regard to his targeted short-term goal over the last couple of months, is a case of ‘Mission Accomplished!’

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