Darren Weir’s racing manager Jeremy Rogers admits Kiwia’s rise through the grades in his first preparation has exceeded their early expectations.
The Weir-trained three-year-old gelding Kiwia landed his first city win at Caulfield in Saturday’s Handicap race over 2000m to make it three wins from his first five starts.
“Early days he hadn’t shown us a great deal,” Rogers said.
“He went to Warrnambool and won on debut and surprised us and then he went to Ballarat and won again.”
Kiwia was not nominated for last month’s Queensland Derby so instead he has remained in Victoria and after a narrow second at Flemington last start the gelding raced to a convincing win against his own age on Saturday.
“He just keeps improving,” Rogers said.
“He looks like a nice horse.”
Apprentice Jordan Childs ended up pressing forward to sit outside the leader on Kiwia and he took over inside the final 300m before surging clear to beat Savvy Dresser by 1-3/4 lengths, with the same margin to All Out Of Love in third.
Childs outrode his claim with a win at Sandown on Wednesday but because acceptances for the Caulfield meeting were already declared he was able to use his 1.5kg claim on Saturday.
“I didn’t expect to be up outside the leader but when he jumped so well and I was going to get caught wide I just rolled forward,” Childs said.
“He travelled nicely and really quickened up nicely.”
