Young Mudgee trainer Cameron Crockett saw a plan he devised 12 months ago come to fruition when bargain buy Barbass won the $100,000 Inglis Two-Year-Old Challenge at Scone.
Barbass was bred at Mudgee by Des Kennedy, put through the Scone sale to qualify for Friday’s Challenge (1100m) and bought back for just $4000 with Kennedy putting together a syndicate of friends to race him.
“We are all from Mudgee,” Kennedy said.
“In fact, I owned Are You Sure, the first winner that Cameron trained.”
Crockett said Barbass was one of two horses by Benfica catalogued at the sale.
“The other one sold for $27,000 but there was no interest in this one,” he said.
“I don’t suppose you could say I have had a really good horse but this one could be the best I have trained so far and we won’t see the best of him until he gets to 1600 metres.
“There is a race over 1400 metres at Randwick in a couple of weeks that would suit him and we may go there but we will see how he pulls up first.”
Soon after Crockett got Barbass home from the sale he set about aiming him at the Challenge.
“It was a long term plan and it is so satisfying to see it come off,” Crockett said.
“He ran second at Bathurst three weeks ago and the minute I got home I rang Blake Shinn and offered him the ride and he accepted.
“I was pretty confident he could win because the favourite (Miss Amajardan) was first-up and if you look back through the results a lot of the winners are second-up.”
Punters also took a liking to Barbass backing him from $13 to $8.50.
Shinn settled Barbass in third position while the favourite was trapped four and five wide from her outside barrier.
Barbass went to the lead halfway down the straight while Miss Amajardan looked set to draw level at the 100 metres but faded to run third.
