The very smart four-year-old chestnut Smooth Chino claimed his seventh win from only nine starts when he won the Group 3 Northam Stakes over 1300m on Sunday. He also has one runner-up finish to his credit.
The Indianna Weinert trained son of Maschino was last seen in the $5 million Quokka where he finished seventh, 2.40 lengths behind the rampant Jigsaw which was his only unplaced run to date … but Smooth Chino (the $2.10 favourite) bounced back to winning form in no uncertain terms here, beating the second placed Fluro Neuro home by 0.82 lengths.
A particular point of interest with this win is that Austin Galati, who was reinstated as Smooth Chino’s jockey after giving way to Lucy Fiore (in the Roma Cup) and Mark Zahra (in the Quokka) guided Smooth Chino to victory for the sixth time in six rides to maintain the pair’s perfect record.
And it was a great ride.
Galati had Smooth Chino saving ground on the rail, tracking the speed in fourth spot approaching the home turn. Inside the final 400m it was decision time for Galati, who had to decide whether to persevere with a rails run, or whether to switch out around heels to take a run one off the fence.
He switched out, and that left Smooth Chino with a task of taking the gap between Thermosphere Lad ($26) and West Star (the $5 second favourite) who were contesting the lead at that stage … and Smooth Chino was quickly up for the challenge, surging through between those runners to reach the lead … and then showing enough commitment to sustain that finishing effort all the way to the line, doing enough to hold off the faster finishing Fluro Neuro to earn his way back into the winners’ enclosure.
West Star and Thermosphere Lad finished third and fourth respectively.
Smooth Chino’s previous wins included the $250,000 Magic Millions WA 3YO Trophy at Pinjarra and the Listed Black Heart Bart Stakes at Ascot … both over 1200m.
The Northam Stakes pushed the distance test up marginally to 1300m which Smooth Chino took comfortably in his stride.
