For the second year in a row, Peter Snowden has prepared a horse to win a Stradbroke Handicap day support race which he insists would have been competitive in the main event.
Snowden decided not to accept for the Stradbroke with three-year-old gelding Academus because it already had Group One-winning colt Epaulette in the race.
Academus would have only been a Stradbroke emergency anyway and instead emulated former stablemate Mental by scoring an impressive win in the Listed Daybreak Lover (1600m).
“I was pretty confident and keen to have a crack (at the Stradbroke),” Snowden said.
“But the team decided we had a good chance there and it’s our policy with colts to give them their best chance of winning a good race.”
Academus, well-backed to start $2.40, settled in the third pair back on the fence before jockey Kerrin McEvoy angled into the clear from the top of the straight.
The favourite took a while to wind up but when he hit top gear from the 200m mark, he reeled in Eximius ($26) to score by a long neck with three quarters of a length to Lucky Hussler ($7) third.
Academus will head for a spell and Snowden believes he’ll run up to 2000m as a four-year-old.
Mental was left stranded as a Stradbroke emergency last year and came out and won the Daybreak Lover before going on to Group One success in the spring.