YOU CAN CALL IT FORTRESS KENDRICK, IF YOU LIKE

By Graham Potter | Monday, March 25, 2024

Over the years, certain sports teams have managed to transform their home game venue into a fortress of sorts, where the opposition’s game fails to gain traction as it lines up, not only against the home side, but also facing the furnace created by the solid support of the home fans whose mass presence projects a wall of heat onto the visiting team.

Racing, though, is an individual sport and, as such, the support aspect on the scale described above will not be there. It will be split across the board with the connections of each runner in a race obviously barracking for their own ... but that doesn’t mean an individual racing trainer cannot build a formidable fortress of his own with walls that are not easy to breach.

Take the case of Stuart Kendrick at the Sunshine Coast.

Kendrick has successfully built his brand with a sureness of purpose, backed by proud professionalism and a committed team, which has already seen him secure ten Sunshine Coast Trainer Premierships to go with the five Mackay Trainer Premierships he won in succession before he moved south to the Sunshine Coast.

Not surprisingly, Kendrick leads the current Sunshine Coast Trainer’s Premiership and is almost certain to add another premiership notch on his belt.

In essence, wherever Kendrick is based ... he dominates.

Call it Fortress Kendrick if you like.

Yet, even by his own formidable standards, the exploits of the Kendrick trained runners over the last two Sunday meetings on the Sunshine Coast Ploy Track have been quite remarkable.

Sixteen races were conducted at the venue on March 10 and March 24 ... and Kendrick won ten of them, winning five out of the nine races on March 10 before increasing that winning ratio when taking out five of the seven races carded on March 24 ... for an overall winning strike rate of 62.5 percent over those two race-days.

It should be noted though, that while his home base success is well secured, Kendrick is anything but a one trick, one venue pony.

He currently sits in fifth place on the Brisbane Metropolitan Trainer’s Premiership ... which is his best position in that Premiership to date.

That statistic alone underlines the greater growth of the stable success with recent city winners such as the unbeaten Can’t Recall One, amongst others, seemingly set to ensure the stable’s form-graph should continue on its current, very impressive trajectory.

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