By David Nagel
Victorian racing’s power shift to the South East suburbs of Melbourne continued at Sandown Park Hillside on Saturday with seven of the nine winners being trained at Cranbourne or Pakenham.
Pakenham trainers had a huge day at the office with gun-trainer Peter Moody scoring a winning double, with Life Lessons and Sigh, while Phillip Stokes prepared Savannah Cloud to win race eight on the nine-race program.
But it was the win of eight-year-old gelding Never Again that held most prominence, continuing the rise of up-and-coming Pakenham trainer Reece Goodwin.
The former picnic-jockey, the son of well-respected trainer Barry Goodwin, only secured his ticket in the early stages of this year.
Goodwin has mainly purchased tried horses to this point in time, but looks set for a very bright future in the sport.
Goodwin learnt his craft from spending time at some prominent overseas stables before working with his dad for two years.
The weekend provided a great guide to Goodwin’s future prospects, with Never Again becoming his first metropolitan winner and becoming the second-leg of a weekend double after Sarnia scored at Cranbourne on Friday night.
Never Again was formerly trained by Clinton McDonald, and showed enough class to win the Listed Chester Manifold Stakes at Flemington in January 2021.
His first city-winner capped off a great first-year of training for Goodwin.
“It’s been a really good first 12 months, plenty of success and plenty of more horses in work from when I first started out, so I couldn’t be much happier,” he said.
“I just felt I had learned enough and it was time to go out on a venture of my own.”
And Goodwin didn’t need to look too long for a new home.
“I had a look at locations, where I thought would be best, and I thought Pakenham was more a place of the future, in five to 10 years, that’s going to be bigger and better than anything else around here,” he said.
“Some of the plans they’ve got in place, I think it’s certainly going to be the place to be.”
Just like Pakenham, Goodwin has plans to grow significantly into the future.
“We just want to try and get some better stock in the stable, no one really sells group or city-class horses on the tried sales,” he said.
“Sometimes that might happen if you’re very lucky, but we’ve basically got to start sourcing some younger horses, Yearling Sales, New Zealand tried horses, and trialled horses, that’s basically the path I’ll be trying to take.
“It’s just trying to get some backing behind me, at the moment I’m trying to get some small share-holders involved, but hopefully there’s someone out there that can throw me a bone and really kick me on in the future.”
Cranbourne’s Melbourne Cup winning team of Ciaron Maher and David Eustace landed a double at Sandown with Detonator Jack and Right You Are, while Cranbourne stalwart Robbie Griffiths was on track to see exciting two-year-old filly Serasana make an impressive racetrack debut.
The beautifully bred daughter of Snitzel/Twilight Royale – who cost $400,000 at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sales – could hardly have been more impressive.
Serasana sat just off a hot speed before jockey Dean Yendall opened her up and she galloped away in the straight for a three-length victory over the 1000-metre trip.
Griffiths and his training partner Matt de Kock – who is currently in his homeland of South Africa getting married – will now freshen the filly before returning to Sandown for the rich Blue Diamond series early in the new year.
“She delivered today,” Griffiths said post-race.
“She’s a quality filly, she kicked off her career the right way.
“One thing Dean (Yendall) and I said before the race was the best part about her will be the conclusion of the race, she’s very strong at the completion of anything she’s done in her education.”
Serasana is bred in the purple, by winning-machine Snitzel out of a mare that won the Group 2 VRC Sires Stakes as a two-year-old.
Griffiths agreed that the $400,000 purchase now looked a bargain buy with bigger targets on the horizon.
“She’s (Serasana) got a lot of substance behind her, both in genetics and on talent, there’s a lot ahead of her,” he said.
“Possibly the (Blue Diamond) Preludes, we’ll see how she comes through, we won’t jump ahead of ourselves in planning, but it will be something pretty big.”
