The Sylvester Doyle Puppy Championship final provided the first-ever Derby vs Oaks match race many hoped for but didn’t think they would ever witness at Longwood on Sunday.
A few years ago, the NCA reverted to the original format where the Victorian Derby and Victorian Oaks was conducted before the Puppy Championship.
And what a masterstroke it has proved with Kyanna (Victorian Oaks winner) and Rothwell Chunk (Victorian Derby winner) staging a course to remember.
Kyanna (Dallas Massina) exited the slips the better and established an early one length lead. But as they came past halfway, Rothwell Chunk (Murray Collyer) started to really work through his gears and was close to levelling up.
Despite the brave effort of Kyanna, the huge strides of Rothwell Chunk proved too much in the run home and he powered home for a one length win.
But that wasn’t where the winning finished for the Collyer crew with Murray’s daughter, Kristie, determined not to be outshone with her star chaser Kasemi notching up another win in the open age feature – Ray Boundy Memorial final – over a determined Amazonian Queen (Melanie Lithgow).
KASEMI narrowly defeats AMAZONIAN QUEEN in the Ray Boundy Memorial final.
Kasemi has been a star this season and no doubt Kristie will have her wrapped in cotton wool over the next four weeks to see if she can go one better in this year’s Waterloo Cup.
The final feature was the Strathbogie Cup, where Unknown Ability (Indiah Guy) won by a couple of lengths over All Inn Ryder (Tony Duncan). He just continues to improve as the season goes on and his effort in the final was very impressive.
Perhaps a smoky for Waterloo, and to go with his win, he also took home a Raw Ability straw kindly donated by Anthony Azzopardi.
Best course of the day was undoubtedly the final of the ‘Rebecca Romyn Cup’ (Event 10) in which her two charges ran the closest course of the day.
Rumour Has It and Sweet Imitated were both so determined to win that neither would give an inch. They were neck-and-neck the second they were given the perfect slip by our Northern slipper Simon and neither the caller Noel nor the crowd could separate them as they raced the whole 300m side by side.
The judge took a while to raise the winning flag and it turned out that the red, Rumour Has It, had its head down at the right time in a course that neither dog deserved to lose.
WATCH: ROTHWELL CHUNK overpowers KYANNA in the Sylvester Doyle Puppy Championship.
WATCH: Coursing ‘Queen’ KASEMI reigns supreme over AMAZONIAN QUEEN in the Ray Boundy Memorial.
