It’s said lightning can’t strike twice in the same place.
So what’s the chance of a strike, two decades apart in separate countries ?
It happened at Caloundra the last week in April when Warset scored a handsome win on her home track.
The angle locks in from the fact Caloundra trainer Paul Duncan won four races with Warset’s dam Chickilicous from his former base in Cambridge in New Zealand and also that he’d taken over the training of 5-year-old Warset only weeks before.
“Owner Warner Bowyer is a good mate of mine,” says Duncan.” The successful New Zealand kiwifruit farmer purchased Chickilicous, took breeder Peter Setchell into partnership and won the quartet of races. “She was by Stark South and was a dead-set mudder.”
Mated with Melbourne Cup winner Shocking, Chickilicous produced Warset and because Paul Duncan had re-located to Caloundra she was sent to highly successful Ruakaka trainer Donna Logan.
Off the back of a trials win Warset bolted home on debut and Logan believed she had a derby prospect on her hands, but things didn’t go quite to plan and after just four starts the promising mare was sent to Sydney to be prepared by Kris Lees.
Peter Setchell was not keen on having the mare up in Queensland, but when the veteran decided to get out of a number of horses he offered Warner Bowyer to buy him out and within a week the mare was in Paul Duncan’s stable.
The mare looked a terrific prospect over 1800m after a first-up strong finish into third over 1600m and Mark Du Plessis rode a confident race to get her home comfortably.
There is more in store.
