They bred him, raced him and sold him and on Saturday at Randwick, the Ingham family may have been pondering the irony as they presented Robusto with the winner’s trophy for the $2 million race they sponsor.
As a homebred for the famous family, Robusto won six of his 30 starts before he was sold for $160,000 to syndicators Darby Racing in September.
In four starts for his new ownership group, the five-year-old had raced competitively, putting the writing on the wall with a runner-up finish in the Festival Stakes (1500m) last start before going one better for new trainer Bjorn Baker in the Group 2 The Ingham (1600m) on Saturday.
“A little bit of divine intervention,” Baker’s racing manager Luke Hilton said.
“He has done an amazing job this time in. He hasn’t had any luck and he finally drew a gate today and it paid dividends.
“There were question marks with him at the mile, but when he came up with gate four we were confident he was going well and just had to run out a strong mile. Tim (Clark) gave him an absolute peach of a ride.”
Robusto ($26) enjoyed a charmed run behind the speed and scooted through along the inside in the straight to hold out Steparty ($15) by a short neck with Encap ($26) another three-quarters of a length away third.
His success continued an incredible run for Baker and Darby Racing, the combination capturing the Winterbottom Stakes with Overpass a few weeks ago and on Saturday taking out the $500,000 Inglis Nursery (1000m) courtesy of Within The Law before claiming the afternoon’s feature mile.
Hilton said Robusto was likely to head to The Buffering (1400m) at Eagle Farm in two weeks as a victory there would qualify him for wildcard entry into the Magic Millions.
The Brad Widdup-trained Jedibeel ($4.60) took out the Listed Razor Sharp Handicap (1200m), diving through a late split to nail Pereille ($8) by a head after being held up for much of the straight.
Widdup has long considered the gelding a stakes-class sprinter and said he would now be spelled with a view to targeting more short course features.
“Today was a hard watch for most of it until the last bit,” said Widdup
“I think he is a black-type horse every day of the week and he has proven that today.
“I will probably stop now. I just wanted to give him these three runs to try to get his benchmark up and we’ll give him a freshen up and try to get him ready for the autumn.”
