El Afortunado Catches The Eye In Maiden Victory

El Afortunado - Anthony Thomas
El Afortunado - Anthony Thomas

KINGSTON, Jamaica - NORMAN Smith’s three-year-old colt El Afortunado took a step in the right direction as far as the Classic conversations are concerned, after a noticeable effort when winning on his second outing at Caymanas Park on Saturday (January 21).

Though the translation of his name is “The Fortunate”, the son of Bern Identity – Urgent Appeal, had no luck on his January 2 debut. He was slow out the box and later weakened out of contention, finishing fourth by over five lengths in that five-furlong-round (1,000m) contest.

However, returning in a Maiden Special Weight event against the Jason DaCosta pair of Smooth Aviator and Whizz Kidd, who were both ahead of him then, El Afortunado made amends over five and a half furlongs (1,100m) with a dominant performance that certainly inspires confidence.

“He is a well-bred and very intelligent horse, but you know with young horse[s] you can’t really bank on them to get it right the first time, which was basically just an introduction to racing. So, we went back and did our homework before bringing him back, he gave an excellent performance this time around,” a delighted Smith told this publication.

“I can tell you that his prospects for the Classics are great, the expectations at home are very high from the owner’s standpoint, and so we believe the sky is the limit where he is concerned. He is still young and has a lot of scope — I mean a lot scope for improvement,” he added.

El Afortunado was again slightly slow out of his starting barrier but was quickly hustled up by former champion jockey Anthony Thomas to track leader Ridge Liner (Andre’ Martin) as they flashed past the five-furlong point.

Tracking alongside the inside rails, Thomas tightly restrained El Afortunado who seemed very eager to tackle the leader, especially when Tru Identity (Oshane Nugent) joined the party heading into the homestretch. When they straightened for the stretch run, the full-of-running El Afortunado joined and briskly swept by the fighting Ridge Liner before asserting his authority to win going away by nine lengths.

The Morris Myrie-owned El Afortunado stopped the clock in 1:08.2 behind fractions of 23.3 and 47.1 seconds on a firm course. Ridge Liner stayed on for second as Whizz Kidd (Robert Halledeen) and favourite De Lye La (Dane Dawkins) completed the frame.

Smith, smiling from ear to ear, couldn’t contain his pride regarding the manner in which El Afortunado went about business.

“I’m really proud of how well he recovered from the start. It wasn’t necessarily a fast pace and Thomas did a fantastic job of tucking in there and saving ground, and he finished very strong at the end. I’m more than proud of him. He’s got everything you can dream of with a horse: he’s brave and powerfully built and, like I said, we have very high expectations for him,” Smith shared.

“We’ll certainly give him the necessary time to get him where we want him so we will just take it one step at a time because soundness is the order of the day, and then we take it from there. But so far, he has shown that he can stay anywhere in the pace and do his running when it’s time to go so we will see how it plays out going forward,” the trainer ended.

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