The Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman-trained Roadcone (Almanzor) led his rivals a merry dance when winning the Stow Storage Solutions Handicap (1600m) at Sandown on Saturday, bringing up a treble for the stable and jockey Luke Cartwright.
The four-year-old son of Almanzor was perfectly ridden by the in-form apprentice who utilised his three-kilo claim when setting a solid tempo and had too much dash for his rivals as Persian Spirit (Cable Bay) and Otago (NZ) (Ocean Park) chased in-vain.
With Moody on holiday in Scotland, Coleman cheered home three consecutive winners with Suances (The Autumn Sun) ($15), Saban (Shamus Award) ($4.40) and Roadcone ($4.40) as she celebrated her first metropolitan treble, having joined Moody as co-trainer at the start of the 2023/23 season.
“It’s really satisfying getting city wins with these horses that have been a part of the stable for a long time and each of them for a different ownership group that have been big supporters of ours,” Coleman said.
“It is really special, and Luke has been doing work for us behind the scenes and it’s good to see him rewarded and again, that was a lovely ride.”
Roadcone has now won four of his 12 starts with the four-year-old gelding a winner at Pakenham at his previous start.
“Luke looked at me a little bit funny when I said, if he begins as well as he did at Pakenham, you might find yourself in front and I’m not sure what he thought of that pre-race, but when the horse jumped as well as he did, there were no questions as to how it was going to pan out from there,” Coleman said.
“Knowing he had that light weight (51kgs) on his back, it was a pretty confident watch.
“He is still quite a physically immature horse. I don’t think he’s ever going to be a really big and strong individual, but even still, you’d probably just like to see him furnish that little bit more.
“I think it’s still ahead of him. We’ll just keep building him through his rating races and go from there.”
By Cambridge Stud stallion Almanzor, Roadcone was bred by Bob Emery and is out of the So You Think mare On The Ball, who placed at two for Murray Baker before a career ending injury.
Baker went to $120,000 to purchase Roadcone from Woburn Farm on behalf of part-owners John Rattray and Alastair Lawrence. Roadcone is a half-brother to Listed winner and Group One placed Archaic Smile (Saxon Warrior), while his yearling half-sister by Too Darn Hot made $675,000 this year at Karaka.