DEEP TEMPEST PREVAILS IN A PRESSURISED FINISH

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, September 14, 2022

The very lightly raced, David Vandyke trained Deep Tempest scored a notable first-up win in a Class 1 Handicap over 1350m at Doomben on September 14.

Notable, in the first instance, because the four-year-old son of Ocean Park had been away from race action for a full nine months and was returning over a distance that should prove to be short of his best … and secondly, because of the commitment he showed to keep his head in front a highly pressurized finish.

Stephanie Thornton immediately had Deep Tempest (a joint $3.90 favourite) in the leading line at the break after which she was happy to settle the Vandyke trained runner in second place as the $13 chance Brentwood rushed away to set up an early three length lead.

That leading margin quickly came down to only a length by the time Brentwood started to take the field through the sweep to the home turn … and all the while Thornton and Deep Tempest were slowly but surely starting to put the squeeze on the frontrunner, gradually edging closer to the point that Deep Tempest was almost right alongside Brentwood on straightening.

The pressure was well and truly on from there as Deep Tempest claimed a narrow advantage early in the straight, but Brentwood wasn’t going away, Selling Sunset ($18) was flying down the inside running rail and Atlantic Royal ($31) was closing ground hard down the center of the track … so it was no place for the faint-hearted, but Deep Tempest kept fighting all the way to the line, in the end being good enough to secure the win by a 0.20 length margin.

This second career win came in only Deep Tempest’s fifth race start and his first as a four-year-old.

Deep Tempest’s results in his four starts as a three-year-old include a win over 1400m in Maiden company and a dead-heat second place finish in a $105 000 Three-Year-Old Quality Handicap over 1600m at the Sunshine Coast.

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