Anaisa aces the rest in Champion Two Yrs Old Trophy at Ripon

Tim Easterby landed his second Listed race in a matter of days when Anaisa shocked her rivals in the British Stallion Studs EBF Ripon Champion Two Yrs Old Trophy Stakes.

The lowest-rated runner in the seven-strong field, the teak-tough Ardad filly had only run in a valuable sales race at Newmarket on Saturday.

Sent off a 12-1 chance, David Allan could be spotted travelling noticeably well two furlongs out and it was a matter of if the split would come in time.

When it did, Anaisa was good enough to take advantage, beating another of the outsiders, Awraad by half a length.

The betting suggested it would be a shootout between George Boughey’s Amorim, who clearly did not act on the track, and Simon and Ed Crisford’s Al Shaham, a dual course and distance winner who surprisingly was beaten a long way out.

Easterby had struck at York at the weekend, in the Julia Graves Roses Stakes with Revival Power, but was winning this contest for the first time since 2004 with Space Shuttle.

Easterby said: “She’s so tough. She ran in the sales race the other day but she was drawn one so she had no chance.

“She ended up running a blinder to finish sixth. I was a little worried about running her again, but we’d already declared her and I bred her so I was keen to try to get some black type as her half-brother is in the sales at Newmarket – he’s really nice, he’s by Mattmu.

“She ended up winning it quite nicely. Dave said they went really hard so he just sat in and filled her with confidence.

“I still have the mare, but I was too tight to put her in the Redcar Two-Year-Old Trophy!”

While still falling some way short of the 10,000 plus who attended the Great St Wilfrid card nine days ago, a healthy crowd of over 7,000 were present on a sunny Bank Holiday Monday at the Garden Racecourse.

However, as a healthy percentage of those were for the course enclosure in the middle, traffic tailbacks in both directions were up to an hour long. Jockey Shane Gray missed a ride in the circumstances, while others had to jump out of their car and run the last bit to the track.

With three races still to go, the course announcer advised that it would take longer than normal to leave the course.

“We don’t have an exact crowd figure yet, but we’re looking at over 7,000. We’d usually get the upper end of 5,000,” said clerk of the course Jon Mullin.

“What has obviously helped is the weather forecast, it’s not a surprise and for once people have been able to plan accordingly.

“Because of that it obviously took people longer to get into the course, which is unfortunate, and what we couldn’t do anything about was we had a car breakdown early in the day.

“Even without that it would have been busy getting in, but that obviously compounded matters.

“I’ve never seen the course enclosure as busy as it is today in my years here, but when the weather is like this it’s a great place to take a picnic and sit in the sun.”

Mullin added: “It has been an eventful day all told, we’ve had two cardiac incidents before racing, the air ambulance came but it was decided against using it, as well as other medical incidents for the doctor to deal with throughout the day.”

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