Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Talented New Zealand-bred pacer Ideal Agent has made a full recovery from a bowed tendon, and he made an impressive return to racing after a 13-month absence when he was not extended in winning the $31,000 Joe and Margaret Petricevich Free-For-All at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
Ideal Agent was the $2.30 second favourite from the No. 4 barrier in the 2130m event, and he was driven confidently by Deni Roberts, who was perfectly content to race the small but muscular stallion without cover while the $1.85 favourite Talks Up A Storm was setting the pace.
Kyle Harper gave Talks Up A Storm an easy time early, with a slow lead time of 38sec. followed by modest quarters of 30.3sec. and 29.2sec. before sprinting home with 400m sections of 27.5sec. and 28.1sec.
Ideal Agent cruised to the front 60m from the post and beat Talks Up A Storm by 2m, rating 1.55.7 in the small field of five runners.
“I planned to go forward to the breeze and did not want it to be a single file affair,” explained Roberts. “Ideal Agent was pretty keen off the gate. I was going to drive him pretty much the way he felt. He wanted to run the gate, so I went with him. He was quite keen throughout and I had a lot of horse underneath me.
“I wanted to keep back from the leader as I wanted to have the softest run as possible. But he went a bit harder than I wanted to. However, he showed his class at the end, and I did not release the ear plugs.”
The win gave Roberts and champion trainers Greg and Skye Bond the first leg of a double. They combined to win the following event with Mighthavtime.
Ideal Agent was having his first start since he won a 2536m Free-For-All on December 30, 2022. Soon after that he damaged his nearside fore tendon, and the Bonds gave him every chance to recover with a rehabilitation program which included a lot of exercising in the water in a walking machine.
Ideal Agent, a seven-year-old by American Ideal, won four times in New Zealand and his 27 starts for the Bond camp have produced 13 wins and eight placings, boosting his earnings to $259,495.