SWAN Hill’s Harry Coffey is on his way to riding a red-hot chance in Saturday’s $3 million Magic Millions 2yo Classic, to be run on the Gold Coast.
The McEvoy-trained Arabian Summer blitzed the field in the Ballarat Magic Millions and then Coffey travelled north with her at the weekend, winning the $150,000 Gold Pearl over 1100m, in a faster time than the colts and geldings Gold Nugget, won by Spywire.
The horse-and-rider combination saw bookies scrambling to recalculate their odds, with Arabian Summer now backed into single figures and that may get even tighter depending on today’s all-important barrier draw at Surfers Paradise.
Coffey is not counting any chickens before any eggs hatch, but he and Arabian Summer have been together in the filly’s four career starts, and they seem to get better at it every time they step onto a track.
“Always helps when you know horses well and luckily, I’ve been able to be with her at every one of her starts and she’s run superbly every time,” Coffey explains.
“She’s bumped into some pretty good horses along the journey and it is really rewarding for her and the team, Tony and Cal (McvEvoy), to string two in a row now,” he added.
Coffey will be joined in the classic by other Victorian trainers and horses, including Wolfgang (Kennewell and Yeomans), Jenni’s Meadow (Lindsay Park), and Vianarra (Busuttin and Young).
Ciaron Maher and Dave Eustace have Spywire and Erno’s Cube in the 1200m race.
He will also ride against some regular sparring partners in Declan Bates, John Allen and Blake Shinn, as well as star riders Jamie Kah on the Godolphin colt Parkour, and James McDonald on Spywire.
While the Magic Millions is all new for Coffey, the McEvoys have been here before with their superstar galloper, Sunlight.
And if Arabian Summer isn’t considered that good just yet, Tony McEvoy recognises a lot of the former champion, which retired with three Group 1s and more than $6.5 million in prizemoney, in his new rising star.
“She is as tough as Sunlight, I’m not going to say she’s in Sunlight’s grade, but she’s getting closer,” McEvoy says.
“The way she is built, she is a really compact two-year-old.
“If you have a horse that can do it, it’s an attractive model (backing up), she’s very tough this girl because she had to come up by road and she hasn’t left an oat.
“She needed a gallop, she hasn’t had a saddle on in eight days, so this will make her better,” he added after Saturday’s victory.
