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Three years after Cheyenne Dancer became the first galloper in modern times to leave Singapore for Malaysia and eventually come full circle a Group 1 winner back at Kranji, another horse is following into his hoof steps, granted on a more modest scale.
Photo by Singapore Turf Club
Though the Group 1 Raffles Cup, which Cheyenne Dancer won by default in 2009 after the original winner Big Maverick was demoted following a positive swab, is way beyond his league, Farrand will still be having another crack at the Singapore hunting ground after the first stint went pear-shaped.
The son of King Cugat began his Kranji career with a bang for original trainer Douglas Dragon when scoring at debut in October 2009 followed by another win two starts later, but his form fell by the wayside thereafter. A tinkering with blinkers and a shift to trainer Stephen Gray’s yard did little to restart the gelding’s stalled career which then read another nine winless runs, prompting his owners, the Northwest Racing Stable, to whisk him away to Malaysia in May 2011.
Farrand landed at jockey-turned-trainer Luke Danis’s stables in Ipoh, and the transformation was nothing short of remarkable. In six runs, he won four times, ran a smack-up second once and finished out of the placings at his only test over the Ipoh straight on a soft track.
He last won in a Class 2 race over 1300m in Penang when ridden by top jockey Azhar Ismail on March 25 before he soon crossed the border a second time, but in the reverse direction.
Such two-way route is uncommon as the exodus of horses heading up North in search of form is akin to crossing the Rubicon. If the move proves successful, connections would not want to change a winning formula.
Cheyenne Dancer (now nine and prepared by David Hill) however bucked the trend a few years ago. After a first Kranji stint with Gray in 2007, which still reaped a decent record of two wins up to Novice level, the son of Indian Danehill was off-loaded to Kuala Lumpur trainer Frank Maynard for a change of air.
The results were instant. Seven wins in 11 starts, including one at a hit-and-run visit to Kranji in the Kranji Stakes A Panasonic Astrovision Stakes with jockey John Powell doing the riding honours. The connections then decided Cheyenne Dancer could take on the Singapore arena better-armed this time, and was pronto sent back down across the Causeway to trainer Michael Freedman - and the rest is history as they say.
The new home Farrand has for his part settled in is trainer David Kok’s yard, ready for an atonement campaign which seems to have already got under way in promising fashion.
“He has trialled well so far. He won the first one defeating Coup Align last month (July 26) and ran second by half-a-length to What Now last Thursday,” said Kok who has entered his new ward in Friday’s $95,000 Open Benchmark 89 race over 1000m on Polytrack.
“He’s been with me for about five months and I’ve given him all the time in the world to settle back here.”
Kok said the six-year-old gelding’s rekindled zest for racing in Malaysia has given the connections renewed hopes for a more successful return to the Kranji battle front.
“The owners thought he was still good to have another crack at Singapore and sent him to me, which I’m very thankful for,” said Kok who currently trains just Farrand for the Northwest Racing Stable.
“I’m still learning about the horse. His Malaysian form seems good and I hope it can stack up here.
“But he’s in a very strong field on Friday. There are some giants like El Padrino (ex Ip Man, whom Kok used to train at his first two starts before he moved to Steven Burridge) and Masthead and I don’t know if he is up to that class.
“Whether he can turn giant-killer is another story, but I couldn’t be happier with his condition going into the race.”
Farrand will be reunited with jockey John Sundradas, who knows him fairly well for having been associated three times with him pre-Ipoh, albeit without success.