Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Lightly-raced four-year-old Goodfellaz produced a sample of his class when he gave a splendid frontrunning exhibition to win the 2130m Garrard’s Rio Cobra Pace at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
His victory showed that he should be a leading candidate for the $50,000 Four And Five-Year-Old Championship next Friday week.
Goodfellaz, trained by Debra Lewis and driven by her husband Chris, was having his third start after a seven-month absence, and he was the $1.30 favourite from the prized No. 1 barrier.
He began speedily and ran the lead time in a smart 36.7sec. before reeling off strong 400m sections of 29sec., 28.2sec., 28.5sec. and 29.7sec. on his way to beating $26 chance Hillview Bondi by 2m, with a further 2m to Alcopony ($7.50) in third place.
Goodfellaz rated a smart 1.54.9 and took his record to 13 starts for seven wins, four placings and $50,522 in prizemoney.
Goodfellaz is certainly bred to be a good winner. He is by American Ideal and is the seventh foal out of the D M Dilinger mare Shes Innocent, a half-sister to the former brilliant pacer Innocent Eyes, who amassed $421,875 from 18 wins and 17 placings from 62 starts.
Goodfellaz is also a half-brother to former outstanding performer Restrepo, whose 49 starts produced 19 wins and ten placings for stakes of $527,118. Restrepo won the group 1 2014 Ballarat Cup when he beat Christen Me and Caribbean Blaster in a three-way photo finish. He also won the group 1 Coca Cola Sprint at Menangle when he beat For A Reason in November 2013. His other feature wins also included one at group 2 level and four in group 3 events.