Photo: Trish Dunell
Three and a half years after taking a $1000 punt on a pedigree they liked on gavelhouse.com, Ian and Shelley Wright landed their richest prize in racing when Farag (NZ) (Sacred Falls) romped to a 20-length runaway in Sunday’s A$300,000 Jericho Cup (4600m) at Warrnambool.
It was the seventh win of a 29-start career for Farag, who has turned that meagre purchase price into A$331,358 in prize-money.
This year’s Jericho Cup was the seventh running of the ultra-long-distance race, which was added to the Australian calendar in 2018 to commemorate Australasia’s light horse involvement in World War I. The race has quickly become a fan favourite and has been dominated by New Zealand-breds, who have won it in six of those seven years.
The Jericho Cup has been on the Wrights’ wish list for much of the race’s history, and they were there at Warrnambool over the weekend to witness Farag’s spectacular win. The seven-year-old was out in front and piling on the pressure a long way from home, and then he pulled further and further ahead down the home straight in a supreme display of stamina. His 20-length winning margin was the largest in the history of the race.
For good measure, the Wrights also part-own the third placegetter Glen Massey (NZ) (Roc De Cambes).
“It was amazing,” Ian Wright said. “We’d been wanting to get a horse into this race for a long time, but we just hadn’t had a horse good enough until now. What Farag did was worth the wait.
“We bought him sight unseen on Gavelhouse.com. We thought he had good breeding for being a long-distance horse. That pedigree was what really appealed to us, so we thought we’d take a punt and put in a $1000 bid on the horse. In the end, that was enough to get him.”
Farag is out of the Yamanin Vital mare Flightime (NZ), a winning half-sister to the stakes performers Royal Flight (NZ) (Danzighill) and Flight Captain (NZ) (Seasoned Star). Flighttime’s granddam Flight Judge (NZ) (The Judge) was a half-sister to Our Flight (NZ) (Imperial Guard), who won the Group One New Zealand Derby (2400m) and Group One New Zealand 1000 Guineas (1600m) and was New Zealand Horse of the Year.
Farag began his career with 14 starts in New Zealand, placing on three occasions and earning $11,385. The Wrights then sold a share of the ownership to Australia’s Peter Groidis, and the gelding was transferred into the Warrnambool stable of Aaron Purcell. His 15 starts on that side of the Tasman have now produced seven wins, a placing and more than A$320,000.
“I was always confident that our horse wouldn’t stop,” Purcell said after Sunday’s big win. “So I was happy to see him hit the front, because I knew he’d be a hard horse to get past.”
