AN ‘EXCELLENT’ DISPLAY IN THE F D WADIA TROPHY, GR.3

The importance of winning the F D Wadia Trophy, Gr.3 in the career of the horse is that apart from being a prestigious trophy, it is a pointer to the winner’s prospect of contesting the plum race of the season, the Derby. In this race the well-bred Adjudicate came into the race looking the part of a hot favourite and backed with past performance to match she looked rather hard to toss in this contest of seven horses where only two were favoured in the betting ring. The Dallas Todywalla-trained Excellent (Excellent Art-Skyelady) was settled well in third to Eden Rock and Adjudicate till heads turned for home. Into the straight, Neeraj Rawal astride Excellent set his ward in motion and he fluently accelerated without much persuasion to widen the margin between him and the rest of the field that were unable to offer a worthy challenge, winning the race by 3 lengths from Bernice who just managed to put his head in front of Adjudicate. Barbaresco was not quite consistent throughout the race but was seen coming on strongly at the end and should run a sharper race next time out. Excellent is likely to face a couple of these opponents again in the S A Poonawalla Million apart from others that have their course set out en-route for the big race.