$100,000 Capitalist filly Count Your Pennies could put trainers up in lights
Croston and Gilmour excited about the potential of two-year-old barrier trial winner
Monica Croston and Gerrard Gilmour may not have the profile of many of their Victorian training counterparts such as Ciaron Maher and David Eustace, Peter Moody and Mick Price and Mick Kent Jnr, but you’d be mistaken for thinking they can’t mix it with the biggest and best stables.
The Pakenham training partners unveiled smart two-year-old Count Your Pennies (Capitalist) to win a Cranbourne barrier trial over 800 metres yesterday, a performance that backed up Croston and Gilmour’s high opinion of the filly who could be the horse to put them on racing’s spring carnival main stage.
Gilmour, a former jumps jockey and renowned horse breaker, worked with Hall of Fame trainer Gai Waterhouse for seven years, while Croston spent almost a decade with the champion horsewoman during a halcyon period for the trainer where two-year-old racing was the backbone of the stable.
“She is a lovely filly and it has been a long time we’ve had one with a motor, but we’ve always liked her from the time we broke her in and it was just nice today to realise that we still know what a nice one actually looks like and feels like from my perspective,” Gilmour told ANZ Bloodstock News.
“I think my first Magic Millions [with Waterhouse] was Assertive Lad [2000] and Mon’s was Dance Hero [2004], so you got to play with those horses when Gai dominated all those two-year-old races.
“I say to people, our limit used to be $30,000 [for a yearling] or they are homebreds that we usually train. Not that we’ve ever had a Capitalist before, but I’d watched a lot of them and they looked very straight forward and we always wanted a two-year-old.”
Count Your Pennies had already demonstrated her maturity and professionalism in a grass track jump–out ten days prior but she was on show for all to see in yesterday’s official Cranbourne barrier trial.
“I actually trialled her myself at Sale against the older horses just because I wanted to get her away from the synthetic tracks,” Gilmour said.
“She did the same thing with me and I’d be 70 kilos now, but she bounced and led and then one kicked up on her inside, she was a little bit new, but we went to the line together.
“She has always been a very professional, straight-forward sort of filly.”
Group 1-winning jockey Ethan Brown was in the saddle on Count Your Pennies yesterday, taking over from Gilmour, going on to defeat the Rosemont Stud-owned, Peter Moody-trained Capmala (Lonhro) by a neck on a Heavy 10 surface.
The Trilogy Racing-owned and Moody trained filly Paradise City (Deep Field) finished two and three-quarter lengths away in third place.
“I watched Pete’s horses trial at Pakenham on the Poly [recently]; they only trialled over 600 metres, but I know the horse that ran second, he won by five or six trialling really sharply,” Gilmour said.
“Count Your Pennies is quite a big, flat-actioned filly … so I reckon she’ll be a better filly on top of the ground.”
Gilmour indicated that connections will resist the temptation to target the Maribyrnong Trial Stakes (Listed, 1000m) at Flemington on October 1, instead waiting for the lucrative $500,000 Inglis Banner (RL, 1000m) at Moonee Valley on Cox Plate day to start Count Your Pennies’ race career.
“It’s hard to go to Flemington and race down the straight now that you can’t trial the two-year-olds there,” the trainer said.
“You’re going to run into the Snowdens and Godolphin and they get a look at the straight where we would be taking a two-year-old who hasn’t had a look at the straight. They’re probably every bit as good as us, if not better, and they’ve had a look at the straight, so we’ve earmarked the Inglis Banner.
“It’s still a bit wet for her to go to the paddock but she’ll have a week to ten days on the water walker and, all being well, we’d like to set her up for Cox Plate day.”
Count Your Pennies is raced by Graeme Curtain, who has owned horses for decades, most notably high-class Victorian sprinter Sequalo (Rustic Amber), himself a useful stallion and the sire of Spirit Of Boom, and more recently the Logan McGill-trained Group 3 winner Gold Fields (Churchill Downs).
After selling a property at Mount Eliza, on the Mornington Peninsula, Curtain instructed Gilmour and Croston to go to the yearling sales to buy a horse or two and the Capitalist (Written Tycoon) filly, a daughter of Golden Penny (Blevic), whose eight wins included two victories in Listed company, caught their eye from the Milburn Creek draft at the Inglis Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale earlier this year.
“We don’t [normally] have the clients or the cash to go and buy one [a two-year-old type], and it’s not putting any of the other owners down, but we were so excited driving home from the sales that we’d been able to go there and buy one that we really wanted,” Gilmour said.
“Like I said to Graeme today, she kept ticking every box. From the time we broke her in and one or two gallops, she felt like she had a motor and then when I went to Sale, she trialled well, and we thought we were on the right track.
“Today, Ethan was the first person to ride her other than me and he got off and he said, ‘this is a nice horse’.
“You think she’s a nice horse, but blokes like Ethan, they ride good horses every day.”