By David Nagel
The cup-day meeting at Pakenham had many highlights on Saturday – not the least the effort of exciting-prospect Marine One winning the $130,000 3YO BenchMark-70 Handicap (1000m).
Marine One has contested some high-quality races in his short seven-start career.
This time last year he had his first start in the $200,000 Group-3 Maribyrnong Plate (1000m) at Flemington on Derby Day, running a cracking third behind smart performers Finance Tycoon and Ingratiating.
In his first four starts – then under the care of Lloyd Kennewell – the valuable Capitalist/Golconda now three-year-old colt ran in group or listed company, before joining the Ciaron Maher/David Eustace stable in the early months of this year.
In his new stable Marine One was dropped back in class, breaking the ice with a maiden win at Swan Hill (975m) in late September before going to Moonee Valley and winning a three-year-old handicap over 1000m.
The stable then tested him at Group-1 level, running down the track in the $1.5million Coolmore Stud Stakes (1000m) on 30 October this year, his last run ahead of his Pakenham assignment on Saturday.
With a month between runs, Marine One had to overcome some early freshness to dash clear to win by nearly two lengths on the line.
Eustace, who along with Maher now calls the Cranbourne-training facility home, was excited by the performance.
“It was a good performance because he probably raced a little bit like we were worried he might do, a bit fresh early, but he was better once he saw a bit of daylight in the straight when it opened up,” Eustace said.
“Instead of trying to restrain him Josh (Richards) did exactly the right thing and let him go.
“He (Richards) said pre-race that he thought the rail was absolutely fine, he didn’t know why they weren’t going down it, so once he was able to get clear air and was able to let him slide, he was quite impressive.”
Eustace was surprised to see Marine One veer to the fence in the straight, needing to be redirected several times by Richards. Eustace said his exciting colt still has a lot to learn.
“I’d say it’s going to be a bit of racing that will sort him out, but he hasn’t really shown that to us in the past, the lugging in, but we’ll just work out where to go from here,” Eustace said.
“It’s just good to get another winner in these colours, so hopefully he can progress from here.”
Jockey Richards said getting the colt to settle was his main priority.
“Dave (Eustace) just said to come out neutral on him and I had to spend a bit of time to get him to relax,” Richards said.
“He jumped, I had a perfect sit on him, he travelled up really, really strongly, and once the run came at the top of the straight, he was only idling…he did it quite easy.”
