Courtesy of Nathan Exelby, The Courier-Mail. January 23, 2019 3:31pm
THE Sunshine Coast Cup on Saturday has a decidedly Godolphin flavour to it, even though their head trainer James Cummings has just one runner in the 1400m $125,000 feature.
Sunshine Coast trainer Natalie McCall will saddle-up Spectroscope, a $230,000 purchase for client Tosh Murphy from the Godolphin draft at this month’s Magic Millions Summer Racehorse Sale.
And Diane Murphy welcomes Astoria to her yard after Jack Pakis paid $145,000 for him at the same sale. Murphy also has the well-travelled Peacock in the race, a horse Pakis secured the year before from a Godolphin dispersal.
Godolphin’s Australian manager Vin Cox said the focus of the operation is more around younger horses, so when an older horse has reached its mark, they move it on – hoping the new buyers enjoy good success.
“They get to a level and a stage where someone else will have more fun with them than we do,” Cox said. “We don’t bottom our horses out, so there’s a bit of meat on the bone for whoever gets them next and we are fully transparent with the horses’ histories.
“What we want to see is the people who buy these horses do well. We cheer and support them and are thrilled when they win more races.”
McCall said Murphy purchased Spectroscope on the basis he wanted a horse that he could “play around with” and “have a couple of nice days at the races over the carnival”.