3 minute read

Pether's Moon can be a tricky ride but Pat Dobbs played his hand to perfection as the Richard Hannon-trained four-year-old landed the Group Three BMW Cumberland Lodge Stakes at Ascot in good style.

Dobbs sat motionless on the gelding in the mile-and-a-half contest, tracking the early pace set by 6-5 favourite Encke, and he was last off the bridle when edging him into the lead inside the final furlong.

Though Parish Hall, who was held up in the early stages, made some headway on the outside, he could not reel the leader in and the 9-4 shot went on to score by a neck, with Encke fading out of contention.

It was Pether's Moon's third win in four starts and owner John Manley is now looking ahead to a winter in Dubai and a crack at the Sheema Classic.

He said: "He won at Glorious Goodwood, we went to Turkey and won the Bosphorus Cup, for big prize money of course, which is always worth hunting for. Today, we gave most of them 5lb and a sound beating, and Parish Hall 2lb - and he's a good horse.

"I think we might be making for Dubai - that's the plan at the moment. We'll give him a bit of a break, but we don't want to let him down too much because he is a big, gross horse and we have to keep him going because, if he gets too big, it takes a long time to get him back.

"He looked very good here and now we'll look at the Sheema Classic. It is not set in stone, but that's what we are thinking."

Dobbs added: "We didn't go quickly, so that helped him. He is versatile ground-wise and while he can stop in front, we won the race when we took a couple of lengths out of them. I was aware that Kevin Manning (on Parish Hall) was coming, but I knew we'd done enough."

Manning felt the ground was against Jim Bolger's runner and said: "He was changing his legs and rolling around a bit. He wouldn't have appreciated this soft ground."