Kathy O’Hara has declared Felix Majestic a horse of the future after he claimed the scalp of odds-on favourite Garza Blanca, stopping the clock just half a second outside track record time.
Garza Blanca, from the powerful Ciaron Maher and David Eustace yard, was sent out a $1.70 favourite after smashing the 1200m course record at Cranbourne at his previous start.
But he couldn’t match the sustained speed of Felix Majestic ($11) on Saturday, the Gary Nickson-trained three-year-old leading throughout to win the Acy Securities Handicap by three-quarters of a length over the favourite.
The winner’s time of 1:08.73 was just over half a second outside the long-standing track record of 1:08.39 set by All Our Mob in 1997, Felix Majestic’s final 600m sectional of 33.35s making it mathematically difficult for his rivals to run him down.
While the good 3 conditions were conducive to horses clocking fast times – the winners of the opening two races both recorded class records – O’Hara was adamant Felix Majestic’s performance was no fluke.
“The track is on fire today, it’s in really good order so they’re running quick times,” O’Hara said.
“But he’s got heaps of upside and I really like him. I haven’t ridden a horse this nice for a long time.
“He ran similar at Hawkesbury and I know they can run quick time at Hawkesbury, but I think he was the only horse on the day to run 33 (seconds for his final 600-metres).”
Felix Majestic is in his first racing preparation and O’Hara says he is still raw and learning his craft.
But she has no doubt the Smart Missile gelding will continue to improve with racing and she won’t be surprised to see him eventually graduate to better grade.
“He’s learning about his racing and he gets out and he travels a bit better,” she said.
“The first couple of times I rode him he was really unsure what to do and never really travelled that well but he’s really growing into a nice horse.”
Tashi ($8) did best of the rest to battle on for third, 1-3/4 lengths behind Garza Blanca.
