KING OF SPARTA - A MAGIC MILLIONS GOLD COAST TRACK SPECIALIST WINS FOR THE THIRD YEAR IN A ROW

By Graham Potter | Saturday, January 13, 2024

The case of horses for courses does not come more clearcut than The Peter and Paul Snowden trained King Of Sparta and his love affair with the Gold Coast track ... old and new.

On January 15, 2022, King Of Sparta won the then $2 million Magic Million Three-year-Old Guineas. The next time he saw the track was on January 19, 2023, where he won the $1 million Magic Millions Sprint.

For the next twelve months, albeit racing against opposition of real quality ... horses like Imperatriz, Think About it, Rothfire when contesting three Group1’s, two Group 2’s and one Group 3 ... King Of Sparta did not win another race. His only run other than Group company during that time came in The Hunter at Newcastle on November 18, where he earned a runner-up finish in what would be his last run before making a third trip to the Gold Coast for his 2024 Magic Millions assignment, this time in the $1 million Magic Millions Snippets.

With his unbeaten Glitter Strip record on the line, King Of Spata, under James McDonald who had ridden hm in his Magic Millions success a year before, thrived as well as he has ever done at the track, taking no prisoners when routing the opposition in a far more decisive manner than his official two length winning margins suggests.

Fourth last and all of seven lengths back soon after the break, the overall situation hadn’t improved that much when the field came to the turn where King Of Sarta cornered all of eight wide, still with five lengths to make up ... but, the underlying point now was that he was about to unleash.

Such was his acceleration that king Of Sparta was already up to second place by the 200m mark and coming at a rate of knots which meant Petronius, who was a clear leader at that stage, was left a sitting duck and was duly shot down by King Of Sparta with a little over 100m left to run ... and there was no let-up by the winner who continued to stride majestically to the line under hands and heels from McDonald.

King Of Sparta. King of the coast!

WINNER FEEDBACK:

Co-trainer Peter Snowden: “He just thrives on these sort of preparations. Some horses need a lot of work ... a lot of racing. This fellow is the opposite. The fresher he is the better he is, and I thought today he was outstanding. I said to J Mac, with this horse we can afford to give them a bit of a start, just get him balanced, but when he stepped like that, I thought I might have said a bit too much there. At the 600m mark he started to truck up and he went around them in a couple of strides. He is a pretty talented horse. I’m not putting any horses down competing here today, but he’s been racing against real elite horses ... The Everest horses ... and running really well, so he thoroughly deserved this win. I was asked this morning what will I do if he wins today and I said, I’ll get him ready for next year.”

Jockey James McDonald: “I can’t believe he went down in weight, and he was in better form coming into this. He is just such a good racehorse. He performs each and every year. He is getting easier to ride. That was a scintillating performance.”

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