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Lure of Lucy shows her class as racing resumes

Published:Sunday | July 23, 2023 | 12:14 AMAinsley Walters - Gleaner Writer
LURE OF LUCY, ridden by leading jockey Reyan Lewis, won the sixth and final race over five furlongs straight, an overnight allowance for three-year-olds and upwards, during an abbreviated race programme at Caymanas Park yesterday.
Anthony Minott/Freelance Photographer
LURE OF LUCY, ridden by leading jockey Reyan Lewis, won the sixth and final race over five furlongs straight, an overnight allowance for three-year-olds and upwards, during an abbreviated race programme at Caymanas Park yesterday.

YESTERDAY’S RESUMPTION of live racing at Caymanas Park was a case of as-you-were on the track with champion trainer Jason DaCosta, his main owner Carlton Watson, and stable rider Reyan Lewis, closing the six-race card in style.

Hobbled by a trainers-led decision to withhold nominations, which affected the previous weekend’s Saturday-Sunday meet, racing resumed yesterday with a six-race programme, the first in the history of the 63-year-old racetrack.

Whereas most of the smaller barns maintained their stance of withholding entries, hoping to have promoting company Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited budge from its $27-million increase in purse money for the 2023 season, trainers from the top-earning stables broke ranks after the previous week’s show of unison, arguing that the Betting Gaming and Lotteries Commission had satisfied doubts about SVREL’s reported sales for 2022.

Three-time champion Anthony Nunes, DaCosta and Watson, as well as top-10 owner-trainer Richard Azan, joined by Patrick Lynch and others, had their runners out in numbers to ensure the meet pulled through.

BACK-TO-BACK WINS

DaCosta brought down the curtain, scoring back-to-back wins with imported runners, Watson’s IS THAT A FACT and LURE OF LUCY.

Azan also registered two wins, MANOUSHE beating three-year-old maidens in the second event at five and a half furlongs, plus BURLAP closing from off the pace to catch Lynch’s JOY IS GOLDEN, stealing home in the fourth at five furlongs round.

Even-money favourite IS THAT A FACT completed back-to-back wins with Lewis, biding his time behind VOLATILITY, before taking over off the home turn and dismissing ACKNOWLEDGEME in the stretch run at six and a half furlongs.

Lewis returned to close the card with LURE OF LUCY, a multiple overnight-allowance winner, who used her class and track bias from stall 11 to outfinish Azan’s POWER RANKING at five furlongs straight, clocking 1:00.4.

Racing is scheduled to continue at the weekend with a Saturday meet before the Tuesday, August 1, Emancipation Day meet, followed by the Jamaica Oaks on Saturday, August 5, and the Jamaica Derby on Monday, August 7.