Gai Waterhouse and Tommy Berry completed a winning treble on the second day of ‘The Championships’ with Cosmic Endeavour leading all of the way to take out the Group 2 $300,000 Drummond Golf Sapphire Stakes (1200m) at Randwick today.
Gai Waterhouse and Tommy Berry completed a winning treble with Cosmic Endeavour at Royal Randwick. Photo by Steve Hart
The in-form Berry took Cosmic Endeavour ($8) straight to the front and the Northern Meteor filly was never headed to score a two lengths win over the Les Bridge trained Avoid Lightning ($11) and roughie Belle De Coeur ($31).
Equal favourites Plucky Belle ($4.60) and Peron ($4.60) finished fourth and eighth respectively.
“This filly in particular is a really exciting filly,” Waterhouse said.
“I said to the owners I think her best run ever was last Saturday, until today. I loved the way she was up on the speed, I said to Tommy today you just use her speed and he said that I feel quietly confident on her.”
“Well he was more than quietly confident.”
Waterhouse and Berry kicked off their winning treble with Diamond Drille taking out the Group 1 $1m Cellarbrations Queen Of The Turf Stakes (1600m) against the fillies and mares.
The Offer then made it a Group 1 winning double for the pair when the Irish import outstayed the rest of the field in the $1m Schweppes Sydney Cup (3200m) with a dashing Berry ride.
And Berry was at his front running best when he bounced Cosmic Endeavour straight to the front in contrast to her last start when she settle in the second half of the field before running home to finish second to Politeness in the Group 3 $200,000 The Other Woman P J Bell Stakes (1200m) at Randwick last week.
Berry and rival jockey James McDonald got to share the Nathan Berry medal for acquiring the most points for a jockey in the ten ‘The Championships’ races over the last two weekends.
Berry said that was honoured to share in the winning of the medal named after his brother and it was a great way to wrap up the two monster days of Autumn Carnival racing.
“It’s a credit to Nathan to have a medal named after him of such prestige,” Berry said.
“The boys had been talking about it in the room, something everybody wanted to win and to share it with a good mate James is an absolute honour but that tops any Group 1s, you just can’t beat that.”
Berry is off to Hong Kong next week to take up another three months riding contract with the Hong Kong Jockey Club following his great success there last year.
