Saffie Osborne’s dream year continues to go from strength to strength and she saw her tally rise to 74 winners after a double on the first day of Ayr’s Ladbrokes Gold Cup festival.
The St Leger-winning 24-year-old landed the feature Ladbrokes ‘Bet £5 Get £30 New Customer Offer’ Kilkerran Handicap on Wild Thoughts for Richard Spencer, shaking him up inside the final furlong and driving the 11-4 favourite on for a two-length victory over Steel Raven.
Osborne told Racing TV: “He’s a lovely horse and all credit to Richard. He started off the year on a mark of 56, so the improvement that he’s continued to show all year has been pretty remarkable, and it’s fair to say after that performance and his run at Doncaster last week he’s only going to keep improving.
“When I was riding him in the lower grades I was riding him pretty forward, no excuses but having ridden him in every start this season I’ve learned that he prefers being dropping in and he shows a really good turn of foot.”
Spencer said: “He had three educational runs last year and got his act together over the winter and he’s gone from strength to strength. He’s got an entry in the Cambridgeshire so we were hoping last week he’d get a penalty in the nice handicap at Doncaster but he’s come here, done it well and hopefully he’ll be able to sneak in at the bottom of the weights.”
Osborne again joined forces with Spencer in the Ladbrokes ‘Get Racing Bet Builder Winnings Boosts’ Handicap on Ice Cube, withholding a challenge from the rallying Blufferonthebus by a neck.
The 5-1 winner could go for a quickfire double stepped up to a mile on Friday in the second division of the Zenith Ltd Building Partnerships That Last Handicap.
Spencer said: “It was good. The draw was a bit of a worry, but Saffie gave him a great ride to get him in a great position and he’s done it well.
“He’s declared for tomorrow, so we’ll see how he comes out of today. He’s stepping up to the mile tomorrow with a better draw, so we’ll see how he is, but he could be back.”
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