Trainer Kelso Wood was in no mood to talk to the press after Sizzling went down narrowly in the Magic Millions Guineas, but 40 minutes later Real Surreal made the Queensland trainer the centre of attention.
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“I hate losing and he is my favourite,” Wood said.
“That was amazing and she only going to improve.”
Real Surreal picked her way through the field to give Wood a Magic Millions win 25 years in the making after he lost the race on protest with Prince Regent.
She ran down Gai Waterhouse-trained Sweet Idea to score by a short neck, the margin Sizzling was beaten, with Missy Longstocking, which found traffic in the straight 1 lengths away.
“I could see at the top of straight she was full of running it was just a matter of [Michael Cahill] finding the runs,” Wood said.
“He did and that’s the way she finds all the time.”
Real Surreal was passed in at $70,000 and retained by the breeder Michelle Lang-McMahon and syndicated among three female firends, therefore picked up the $325,000 Racing Women’s Bonus.
The key moment for Cahill came at around the 300-metre mark when he was searching for a run.
“I had [Ticket to Toorak] in front of me and he was ducking in and out and I had to wait and navigate inside him,” Cahill said.
“She accelerated through the gap at the furlong and that’s when I felt she would win the race.”
Sweet Idea did all the work in front, when taking on stablemate Certitude and when she burst clear it looked like another Magic Millions Classic was going to the Gai Waterhouse stable.
“She was awesome, I bet every trainer would want to take her home,” Waterhouse said.
“We will take her home and have one more before the Slipper.”
Damian Browne had a hard-luck story on Missy Longstocking, which started favourite after Assail was a race morning scratching.
“I was held up and held up, while the winner got a break and it was a gutsy effort for her to keep finding the line,” Browne said.
“She was slow out again, and it is a little trait she is getting into, and in the last 100m she felt it a bit.”
Unbeaten Victorian gelding Clevadude blew the start and was never in the race.
His trainer Rick Hore-Lacy explained to stewards that he felt wasn’t right.
“Someone knew something because he was $3.60 to $6,” Hore-Lacy said.
“I’m wishing I had never backed up before the race because he was sweating and he never does that. He missed the jump and that was that.’’
Clevadude’s rider, Craig Newitt, said the long wait in the barrier may have cost him jumping with them.
“We were in there a long time and he was standing okay,” Newitt said.
“He just missed it and then was on his wrong leg for the entire race."
