ISLAND TIDE MAKES IT SIX-IN-A-ROW FOR GG RACING

By Graham Potter | Sunday, June 2, 2024

Sunday, June 2 at Kilcoy ... a beautiful day of winter sunshine after a weather forecast earlier in the week had appeared to threaten the meeting ... and taking home two winners, that was the delight experienced by the Corey and Kylie Geran stable who had Island Tide and Shotgun Sixtyfour salute on the seven-race card.

Island Tide became the latest tried horse purchase to win on debut for the Geran training partnership. This has been such a common, recurring theme with this up-and-coming stable that you could start believing that, in this game of chance, they have got this aspect of their gameplan down to a fine art.

Of course, that can’t be guaranteed moving forward ... nothing ever can in racing ... but, by the same token, current results posted in this regard ... past the post, on the board ... are very impressive.

Astute purchasing has to go hand in hand with the race preparation though and ... how’s this for a statistic.

Horses racing in the already distinctive colours of Grant Goodrum’s GG Racing, all trained by Corey and Kylie Geran, have now won six races in a row with Island Tide being the latest addition to that list following On Hold (three wins), Jenni Moreese and Never Give Up.

Before changing stables and coming into the Geran stable, Island Tide raced eight times for Newcastle based trainer David Atkins and nine times for Sunshine Coast based trainer David Vandyke.

In her two years, in total, with Atkins and Vandyke, Island Tide had a fairly luckless time as, while she did claim one win in those seventeen starts, she also finished second on no less than eight occasions, including in her last start for Vandyke a month earlier, which also came at Kilcoy over the 800m trip on soft going, the same task that the Geran team set the daughter of All Too Hard here.

Landan Sykes made his intentions on Island Tide (the $2.90 favourite in this Class 2 Handicap) very clear from the first stride out of the gates. He chased his mount out early, searching for the lead and, although he had some early opposition for that position from Shajaea ($4.20), Island Tide duly found the front after the field had covered 100m, but Shajaea wasn’t going away and stayed close to the Geran trained runner throughout the first half of the race.

Approaching the home turn it had become a two way contest between these two runners, with Island Tide leading her rival by a length, but when Sykes gave Island Tide the green light to go shortly after straightening, the four-year-old kicked away and had her race already comfortably won halfway up the straight.

The winning margin (over Shajaea) was 1.80 lengths with the balance of the field well and truly strung out all the way to 11.20 lengths behind that.

The start for the stable’s latest purchase could not have gone ... and, six-in-a-row for GG Racing ... well, that is just exceptional.

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