Steered by Damien Oliver, Straight Arron showed signs of being a horse to follow out of the ‘off season’ midweek Sandown meeting with his win on debut in class record time.
Straight Arron ($3.50), trained by Chris Waller, made a good impression in defeating $2 favourite The Economist by ¾-length in the Ladbroke It Plate over 1400 metres.
The 1:23.79 set a new class mark at Sandown on the Hillside course but for the gelding by Fastnet Rock, Jo Taylor, Waller’s Melbourne representative indicated that there is more to come for the three-year-old.
“He’s done a few things wrong,” Taylor said of the race day preparation.
“He’s had a few issues in the barriers hence the brow band he had on today but it looked like he behaved himself long enough to get out the barriers a bit slower than what we anticipated but when you’ve got someone like Damien Oliver aboard, he bides his time well and he did a good job to get him home.
“It took him a while to build and go through his gears.”
The ability shown being enough so far to expect more.
“He’s still a bit raw and with his first start here I think you can expect a fair bit of improvement from that,” Taylor continued.
Oliver notched is 28th metro win for the season with this victory.
“He looks like he’ll naturally progress to further,” Oliver said post-race.
“He was pretty good in the run until I got to the front and then he didn’t really know what to do.
“The ears pricked and he waited.
“He feels like a horse that will get over further, no trouble at all and there’s more improvement to come as he still doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“I said to Jo that maybe a bit of ‘sheep’ on the side might help to focus him up a little bit.”
