JUNGLE PRINCE RULES ON DEBUT

By Graham Potter | Thursday, February 1, 2024

It was a dream debut performance ticking so many boxes.

The Tony and Maddysen Sears trained Jungle Prince looked a picture in the pre-race preliminaries for a Maiden Plate contest over 1350m at Doomben on February 1.

He quickly took up a positive position in the running shortly after the break, after a slightly tardy start, raced fourth then third early, a little over two lengths back, tracking the speed, saving ground, until the approach to the home turn where Jimmy Orman shifted Jungle Prince out one wide and moved into second place with the front-running Peony Surprise ($5.50) firmly in his sights.

When Orman asked the Sears trained runner to extend, Peony Surprise tried to fight off the challenge, but that quickly became an uneven contest as Jungle Prince swept right past Peony Surprise and into the lead with such aplomb that he continued to widen his advantage over the chasing pack with contemptuous ease over the concluding stages to post a winning margin of 3.56 lengths, more than justifying his $2.90 favouritism, which turned out to be a very generous price.

The performance of the $300 000 purchase, who was a pickup ride for Brisbane’s leading jockey Jimmy Orman (Ryan Maloney was indisposed), was also particularly satisfying because of all that had gone into getting Jungle Prince to this stage.

The son of Tarzino had no less than six trials (two of which he won) ... starting on March 7, 2023, with the sixth trial coming on January 23, 2024 ... before being allowed to see race action, a full ten-and-a-half months of patient preparation with has now clearly started to pay dividends.

“We’ve always had a high opinion of him, so it was good to see,” said co-trainer Maddy Sears.

“He has been a work in progress. It was obvious he was never going to be a two-year-old. There were a few very minor issues early ... nothing major. He just needed time and we needed to be patient.”

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