Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Plutonium, a lightly-raced and much-travelled six-year-old, maintained his terrific form in his comeback campaign — and continued to surprise his trainer Michael Young — when he scored a narrow victory in the $50,000 Binshaw Classic at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
Driven by Emily Suvaljko and starting at $6.80, Plutonium began from out wide at barrier seven and quickly dashed forward, three wide, to work hard in the breeze outside the pacemaker Talks Up A Storm before getting to a narrow lead on the home turn and beating Talks Up A Storm by a head, rating a slick 1.55.8 over the 2130m.
The New Zealand-bred Plutonium now has had five starts for four wins and a third placing since resuming after an injury-enforced absence of 13 months.
The Auckland Reactor gelding bowed his nearside tendon in mid-July of last year, and Young said that he marvelled at the pacer’s resilience in performing so strongly after damaging his tendon.
“I wouldn’t have believed it a few months ago that Plutonium would be a winner again, let alone a winner of a Group 2 event,” said Young. “There is still a little banana bow on his leg, but it doesn’t seem to worry him. I simply can’t believe he is going as well as he is.”
Plutonium’s victory gave Young the first leg of a winning treble, with the stable scoring impressive wins later in the program with Always Fast and Beefour Bacardi.
This was Young’s second treble, following the wins of Nevermindthechaos, Doc Holliday and Vespa on April 8 this year, and it continued the remarkable rise of the 33-year-old trainer, who is in second place on the WA trainers’ premiership table with 63 winners and 64 placings from 217 starters — behind Greg and Skye Bond, who have had 396 starters for 131 wins and 122 placings.
This was also Young’s second Group 2 success, coming after Doc Holliday’s victory in the Four And Five-Year-Old Championship on April 8.
Plutonium won only once from nine starts in New Zealand before racing three times for three wins in Victoria and five times in South Australia for two wins and two placings. His WA record of 20 starts for six wins and six placings has boosted his career record to 37 starts for 12 wins, six seconds and two thirds for $125,384 in prizemoney.