Price predicting bigger and better from Sabaj
Mick Price hailed the emerging Sabaj (Manhattan Rain) as a likely star of the autumn after the lightly raced four-year-old claimed his black type breakthrough with an imposing win in Saturday’s Cranbourne Cup (Listed, 1600m).
Starting a well-supported $3.30 favourite, Sabaj gave Price his fourth win in the race and jockey Beau Mertens his third winner for the day, after a well-judged ride helped the gelding to his fifth win from eight starts.
Jumping from gate 12 of 13, Sabaj settled quietly in third-last position off a solid tempo. Mertens started a lengthy run from the 600 metres, circling the field to stalk the leaders five wide around the turn, before Sabaj hit the lead at the 100 metres and came away to score by 0.75 lengths.
The Robbie Griffiths-trained Enxuto (Lean Mean Machine) also made strong ground from the rear to take second as a $6.50 third elect, just ahead of Ciaron Maher’s Holymanz (Almanzor) at $16.
It was Sabaj’s first black type win, following seconds at Morphettville last autumn in three-year-old Group 2 and Listed events, and Price feels the unfashionably bred miler can go on to bigger and better races after a spell.
He has a template to follow in the stable. Price – and co-trainer Michael Kent Jnr – took the Cranbourne Cup last year when Globe (Charm Spirit) also claimed his first stakes win. That gelding is now an elite-level winner, having taken last month’s Might And Power (Gr 1, 2000m) at Caulfield.
“We’ve got the autumn in front of us here with this horse,” said Price.
“This is sort of a brand new horse. He’s perfectly sound, feet, knees, fetlocks lovely, he’s lightly raced, good ability, clean winded. And I think if we look after him…
“I wouldn’t say he’s a tough horse – that’s not how we treat him – but if we’re gelling with him and we treat him right, we’ll have a lovely horse in the autumn and we can chase a good race.”
Price praised the training facilities at Cranbourne – his stable’s home base – and said the key to Sabaj was his carefully tailored training regimen.
“[It’s] probably his work and what he copes with,” the trainer told Racing.com. “That’s the difficult part of our training isn’t it? When do you gel and when don’t you?
“I’ve trained enough losers to know I’m not gelling with many of them. But I feel some horses we gel with, and we’ve got his [Sabaj’s] work right.
“We don’t overdo him and he’s clean-winded and we think he appreciates that way of doing things.”
Price also paid credit to the in-form Mertens, whose Cup victory gave him seven winners from his past 14 rides.
“Sometimes the outside gates, when you want to ride them cold, are good,” he said.
“It worked out well. There was just enough tempo, he balanced up nicely, relaxed nicely, finished off strongly.
“I did say [to Mertens], ‘Be the deepest horse; don’t follow anything into the race’, because I wasn’t confident that the right horse was in the race where we would be.
“So I’m very happy. I would say we’ll probably put him away now. He should have some sort of rating to have a nice horse in the autumn.”
Mertens said the race had gone perfectly to plan, and echoed Price’s assertion Sabaj was a top-class horse in the making.
“I don’t think it could’ve worked out any better really from the gate we had,” he said.
“I just let him travel naturally into a position he was comfortable in. We ended up on the back of Steparty in a three-wide line. I just got dragged enough into the race that I didn’t have to do too much work, but when I popped him out, he just accelerated that quickly beneath me.
“He put the race to bed very quick. From the feel he gave me today he’s a very very nice horse and he’s only going to get better and better.”
The homebred Sabaj is the second of three named foals for the unraced Bouzy (Uncle Mo), whose only other runner Tipsy Vixen (Foxwedge) is a city winner in Adelaide.
The nine-year-old Bouzy, who hasn’t had any offspring put through a sale, now has a yearling colt and a colt foal, both by Peltzer (So You Think).
Sabaj’s win provided Manhattan Rain with his 21st individual stakes winner worldwide from 453 runners, at 4.6 per cent.