Royal Banquet claims his first city win

Wednesday 29 July 2020, 5:01pm

Lightly raced Royal Banquet has stepped up to midweek city grade and continued his winning run this winter to give emerging Newcastle trainer Nathan Doyle his first metropolitan winner at Warwick Farm.

The rising four-year-old gelding made it four wins from five career starts, and three victories from as many starts this preparation since joining Doyle's stable, when he revelled in the heavy conditions to take out Wednesday's Grunt Standing @ Yulong Handicap (1400m) in benchmark-70 grade.

It followed wins in a Scone class one and a Newcastle class two in his previous starts this winter.

With Lee Magorrian aboard, the $2.45 favourite drew clear over the concluding stages to defeat Eden Vale by 5-1/4-lengths.

"Every time we step him out he keeps improving," Doyle told Sky Thoroughbred Central.

"He was quite an anxious horse when he first got to us and he's still very raw and new.

"It's just such a relief to get the first city win on the board."

He said Royal Banquet's owner Matthew Sandblom had been a good supporter of the stable.

"There were offers coming thick and thin for this horse and he stuck by us, kept the horse," Doyle said.

"I'm glad he did."

Wednesday's meeting was the final Sydney metropolitan meeting of the 2019-20 season and apprentice Louise Day played a starring role by riding a winning treble.

Two of Day's victories were aboard horses trained by Joe Pride who also had a winning treble on the program.

Day's first winner on the seven-race card came aboard the Bjorn Baker-trained Matowatakpe before victories aboard the Pride-trained duo Brutality and Threeood.

Pride's other winner was with Red Hot Chillypins and Kerrin McEvoy, who later also steered the Matthew Dunn-trained The Fire Trap to a three-quarters of a length win in the final race on the card.

The Fire Trap claimed a benchmark-70 over 1200m, in which the four-year-old gelding carried 62kg in his first start back from a spell.

Dunn bookended the meeting, with three-year-old gelding Quatum making a winning start to his career in the Xtravagant At Newhaven Park Sprint (1100m) when scoring by 1-1/4-lengths against three rivals.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »