Lightly-raced gelding Landing made a spectacular transition to stakes company with an impressive victory in Saturday’s Listed South Pacific Classic at Randwick.
Dominating from the front, Landing ($1.80 fav) extended his lead midway up the straight and was strong to the line, scoring by 1-3/4 lengths from Sacred Pins ($4.60) who stalked him throughout.
That pair dominated betting and the 1400m race with Miss Upstart ($31) doing best of the rest another four lengths in arrears.
Waterhouse was effusive in her praise of Landing and said she thought jockey Nash Rawiller had gone too quick in front.
“Nash went at a very fast clip and I thought he might have been asking too much of him,” Waterhouse said.
“But the horse is just flying. He’s gone from strength to strength.
“I’ve taken him very steadily through his classes and today I thought he was ready for it.
“He was more than ready for it.”
Rawiller said Landing did a good job to keep going after being forced to work early from a wide gate.
“He had to do a bit of work to get across but he just did it at his own cruising speed after that,” Rawiller said.
Waterhouse said Landing was now likely to head to the Hawkesbury Guineas in two weeks with next month’s Scone Guineas also in the pipeline.
Sacred Pins is also on the Hawkesbury Guineas path and trainer Chris Waller feels he is open to improvement.
“He’s still learning about it all,” Waller said.
“He’s pretty adaptable and I think he will get a mile (1600m).”
