Cool Cameron gets Maygrove home with heady ride

Cool Cameron gets Maygrove home with heady ride

Last year’s champion jockey Matt Cameron showed all his class at Awapuni on Saturday to land enigmatic Cambridge galloper Maygrove a winner over 2000 metres after a heady front-running ride on the promising stayer.

Pre-race plans to ride the four-year-old gelding in a forward position were thrown into confusion after he dwelt at the start and settled in the rear as the runners in the Brokerweb Risk Services sponsored event crawled their way out of the home straight for the first time.

Cameron seized the initiative as he let Maygrove slide around the field near the 1200 metre mark and from there he dictated the speed to his nine rivals before booting clear in the run home to hold out Mato Grosso by a long neck in a comfortable 2.03.51 for the journey.

Co-trainer Andrew Forsman, who prepares the son of Authorized in partnership with Murray Baker, was full of praise for the ride by Cameron.

“Matt did a super job as he didn’t panic when the horse missed the kick and let him get into a nice rhythm before he sent him to the lead,” he said.

“After that he was able to dictate and although the winning margin wasn’t that big I think he was holding them fairly easily at the line.”

Forsman was pleased with the effort as he believes the grey gelding is still 12 months away from reaching his peak.

“His pedigree suggests he will only get better as he gets older so we do expect he will be at his best with another season of racing under his belt,” he said.

“At present he is still doing a few things wrong which I think will iron out in time but at the moment it does mean he is better suited going the left-handed way around.

“It’s quite frustrating as there are some perfect races for him at Ellerslie over the next couple of months but he was terrible there at his last start even though he ran second and we can’t seem to work out why.

“He’s gone good races at Tauranga and Pukekohe which are right handed tracks but he just seems to get a bee in his bonnet when he is at Ellerslie so at this stage we will probably avoid it there which isn’t ideal as that’s where most of the big money races are.”

Forsman and Baker will now sit down to plan the rest of the gelding’s summer campaign which is likely to include an attempt at the Gr. 2 Platinum Homes Wellington Cup on the 24th of January as his major target. – NZ Racing Desk

ENDS

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