Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX
Veteran trainer Mike Reed was looking forward confidently for a win with Flying Rumour in race ten at Gloucester Park on Friday night, but the five-year-old had to be scratched after being injured in a stable mishap.
However, Reed was compensated when Flying Rumour’s stablemate Dark Eyes filled the breach with a timely victory in race eight, the 1730m Kate Mac For Breakfast Pace.
Dark Eyes, driven by Shannon Suvaljko, was a $5.80 chance who did well to overcome the disadvantage of starting from the outside of the back line.
Major Overs ($8.50) set a solid pace, while Suvaljko was happy to keep Dark Eyes in eighth position before sending him forward from sixth at the bell, following Elwaddell’s three-wide run. Dark Eyes was switched four wide 350m from home and he ran home strongly to take the lead about 60m from the finish and beat the fast-finishing $14 chance Gee Smith by a half-length.
Dark Eyes is a three-year-old gelding by Bettors Delight and is the second foal out of former outstanding race mare, the New South Wales bred Art Major pacer Our Golden Goddess, who amassed $442,410 in prizemoney from 17 wins and eight placings from 29 starts.
Fourteen of those starts were in New Zealand and resulted in five wins and five placings. Those runs included four seconds in Group 1 events and two thirds in Group 1 races behind star pacers Lazarus and Waikiki Beach in 2016 and 2017. Then Our Golden Goddess travelled to Australia where she won the Group 1 Ladyship Cup at Melton in January 2018.
“Dark Eyes cost $60,000 as a yearling in Melbourne and is a good honest little horse,” said Reed. “I expect him to keep improving and hopefully he will develop into a candidate for the WA Derby in November.” He has had 19 starts for four wins, three placings and $30,815 in prizemoney.
Reed said that Flying Rumour was injured at his Henley Brook stables. “He shied when he was jogging, and the young bloke was tipped out of the cart and the horse galloped around the track before slipping on the concrete in the stables,” he said.
“He fell over and took skin off his rump and had some filling in his nearside hind leg.”