Kembla Was The Making Of Group One Champions

Illawarra Mercury

Monday April 9, 2007

By CHRIS ROOTS

KEMBLA Grange was the nursery for AJC Australian Derby day, with Group One winners Fiumicino and Bentley Biscuit both having broken their maidens on the South Coast.

It was only 38 days before his Derby success that Fiumicino came to Kembla to open his winning account and the trip played a crucial role in his development into a Classic winner.

"We wanted a 1600m race for him and the only place we could find a suitable race was at Kembla," John Hawkes' right hand man Peter Snowden explained.

"We don't take horses down to Kembla all the time but we know when we go there it is a good track for them to learn on," he said. "That day he got the win and we found out that he could go on a wet track, which proved very important today. It was a fairly ordinary field but he showed that touch of class in beating them."

Fiumicino was only the second horse to win at Kembla during an AJC Derby-winning preparation, after Wilton Park in 1968.

"The win at Kembla was an important step along the path," jockey Darren Beadman said. "It was the right race at the right time."

The Derby was only Fiumicino's sixth race start, but he trounced his three-year-old rivals.

"This is a very special horse," Snowden said. "It is his first preparation. To win here, and to do it so well, he is just an outstanding horse."

Earlier in the afternoon, the Kembla 1200m track record-holder Bentley Biscuit had outclassed the Group One TJ Smith (1200m) field.

It's a little less than two years since Bentley Biscuit stepped on to a racetrack for the first time at Kembla, blitzing a field of maidens.

"He's a wonder horse and that was a well deserved Group One," Gai Waterhouse's foreman Tania Rouse said. "He went to Kembla, like a lot of our good horses, because it is a great track for them to learn.

"It's sometimes a better option than Canterbury because of the long gallops as opposed to the tight turns. He needed that sort of track and we had no hesitation in sending him down and would do the same thing again."

© 2007 Illawarra Mercury

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