Wish List just gets up to win the Gr 2 Woolavington 2000 (Picture: Race Coast)
The Justin Snaith-trained Wish List was expected to doddle the Gr 2 Woolavington 2000, but the pace worked out all wrong for her and she ended up only just managing to scramble home from Minogue, who looked at one stage to have finally cracked her first stakes race win.
Minogue was taken to the front from a wide draw in the seven horse field and didn’t have to expend any energy doing it as the early pace was a crawl.
Andrew Fortune was caught wide early on Wish List but as the pack was shuffled he found a seemingly nice place for her with cover behind Rainbow Lorikeet, who was sitting on the quarters of the second horse, Beach Verse.
However, they were still going at a crawl and when the leader began to stretch going up the hill towards the straight, Beach Verse and Rainbow Lorikeet suddenly became a bit detached.
When Wish List switched out for her run at the top of the straight she looked to have a tough ask, because she had five lengths to make up and Minogue was still going well.
However, the 33/1 shot began tiring at the 200m mark and 46/100 favourite Wish List began making up ground rapidly.
However, Muzi Yeni still had not played his trump card on Minogue. He changed whip hands as she was being overtaken and got her to change legs.
Unfortunately, Yeni dropped his rein as he got Minogue on to the right leg. Nevertheless, her late fightback was only just not enough.
The gallant Wish List hung on by a shorthead.
However, she likely had a harder race than the connections would have liked.
Keukenhof ran on well from last. Her run gave an indication of how well Wish List had done to get up, because she almost reached the latter’s quarters at one stage and yet was beaten in the end by 1,85 lengths, despite Wish List having had to dive all the way to the inside.
Wish List is the first stakes winner produced by Silvano mare Wind Chill, who is also the dam of the useful Windrunner and hails from a powerful female line.
Wish List is now a winner of 5 races (2 Gr1’s and 2 Gr2’s) with 4 places from 10 starts for stakes of R2 320 613.
She will remain on a merit rating of 117 and will carry 53,5kg in the Hollywoodbets Durban July as things stand.
Wish List is owned by Jonathan Bloch and Nancy Hossack.
