Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Dylan Egerton-Green went into the 2536m APGgold.com.au Pace at Gloucester Park on Friday night with a good degree of confidence — and a plan to stalk Rockaball, a $6.50 chance he considered his main rival.
His plan worked to perfection. As expected, the polemarker and $2.40 favourite Valbonne set the pace, and with $41 outsider Medieval Man in the breeze, and Rockaball enjoying the favourable one-out, one-back position, Egerton-Green was enjoying the sit behind Rockaball with Whatabro, the $4.90 third favourite.
Just after passing the 600m mark in the final circuit, Micheal Ferguson sent Rockaball forward, out three wide. “I flushed him out and then followed him (three wide),” said Egerton-Green.
Rockaball took a narrow lead 225m from home, but he was unable to hold out the fast-finishing Whatabro, who burst to the front 70m from the post and won by a length and a half from Rockaball, with the $4.20 second fancy James Butt finishing fast, out wide, to be a neck away in third place after trailing Valbonne all the way. Valbonne, an all-the-way winner over 2130m the previous week, wilted to finish fourth over the 2536m trip.
Whatabro, who was under the care of Aleesha Bynder, with trainer Michael Brennan in Sydney with Pinny Tiger, ended a losing sequence of 13. He has been a wonderfully consistent moneyspinner, with his 124 starts producing 26 wins and 40 placings for stakes of $211,993.