ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Patrick Husbands found another winning vein, narrowly winning the CAN$150 000 (BDS$297 400) Seagram Cup Stakes, and collecting a triple on Saturday at the Woodbine Racetrack.
The Barbadian reinsman rode 5-1 shot James Street to victory by a head over Stunning Stag, under Gerry Olguin, in the eighth of ten races on the card at Canada’s premier racing oval.
James Street, a four-year-old bay colt owned by Barbados-based Canadian business executive Eugene Melnyk, ran the 1 700 metres on the Polytrack in one minute, 44.01 seconds – just 1.79 secondss over the track record.
“We had a pretty slow half,” said Husbands.
“But I didn’t want Gerry (Olguin) to come and catch me sleeping, so I tried to get [the colt] going before he got there, and he gave me 110 per cent down the lane.”
The victory gave Husbands his 15th stakes win for the year in North America, and his third Melnyk Racing Stables colours.
He now has 92 wins for the season, earning CAN$4 754 932 (BDS$9 427 000 and is second in the jockeys’ table – 21 behind current leader Luis Contreras.
Court Of The Realm, under last year’s champion jockey Eurico Da Silva, came into the Seagram Cup on a five-race winning streak and was the best of the seven-horse field over the first half of the race.
Husbands kept his mount in touch from fifth position, racing wide down the backstretch behind Southdale under female jockey Emma-Jayne Wilson, and a rail-riding Sand Cove owned by Barbadian business exec Ralph Johnson and ridden by Trinidadian-born jockey Richard Dos Ramos.
Husbands advanced James Street to apply pressure at the far turn before taking command at the top of the stretch, and though Olguin launched an all-out attack on Stunning Stag in the final 100m, there was no stopping James Street.
Earlier, Husbands had landed a comfortable, wire-to-wire, seven-length victory aboard 6-5 favourite Quality Lass in the CAN$67 100 (BDS$133 000) fifth race over 1 100m.
He won an early duel with Supreme Prospect under fellow Barbadian Slade Callaghan, and edged the two-year-old chestnut filly clear in the middle of the backstretch and widened through the remainder of the race to stop the clock in one minute, 03.85 seconds.
Husbands later brought the curtain down with a four-and-a-half-length victory astride the 6-1 shot Daring Delilah in the CAN$26 900 (BDS$53 331) final race over 1 700m.
Daring Delilah, a four-year-old chestnut filly, was kept in range by Husbands before he produced her four-wide late in the turn, taking a short lead at the top of the stretch to finishin 1:46.09. (CMC)
