Bourne hoping Lightning strikes in Adelaide
David “Butch” Bourne’s dilligence more than two years ago, along with an ounce of good fortune, has paved the way for the Seymour-based trainer to chase the fifth stakes win of his nearly four-decade racing career.
Ojosan, a $50,000 filly purchased by Bourne for owner Mike Howard at the 2020 Magic Millions Adelaide Yearling Sale, will attempt to make it three wins in succession when the promising daughter of Mikki Isle (Deep Impact) contests Saturday’s SAJC Lightning Stakes (Listed, 1050m) at Morphettville.
The three-year-old, who won her maiden at Wodonga in country Victoria last August by seven lengths, has struck career-best form late in the racing season, claiming an important last-start city win at Caulfield on July 9, prompting Bourne to chase “black type” in South Australia with the filly.
“She’s been a bit unlucky and I always associate bad luck with a horse’s racing pattern, so if you’re not last and a swooper or a leader, you are usually in the pack and if you’re in the pack you’re going to need luck,” Bourne said yesterday.
“The other day at Caulfield, you isolate her, she jumped out, found a spot, got off the fence, got through them and won, then you go back and look at what happened to the rest of them, but she has got talent.”
Placed at the first two starts of her current preparation, at Ballarat in March and Sale a month later, Bourne credits Ojosan’s winning streak to a Sandown defeat over 1300 metres in May, the filly’s only unplaced run in eight starts, a career that has so far returned connections $132,000 in prize-money.
“The preparation was basically on track for what we wanted – three-year-old fillies races on soft ground – which are all the things that she likes, and everything was going well. She finished second in the Sale $100,000 race and then we went to Sandown and seemingly she was disappointing,” the trainer said.
“The more I looked at it and thought about it, I came to the conclusion that she doesn’t run 1300 metres. I said, ‘let’s just go back to basics and go to the weakest race’, which was Wangaratta, and get past that before we reassess.”
One of five winners from six to race out of Adelaide Listed winner Class Apart (French Deputy) and a granddaughter of Group 3 winner Stylish Lass (Barathea), Ojosan certainly belied her Sandown performance with an acceleration that overcame the Heavy 10 Wangaratta surface to score by three lengths in the 1100-metre contest on June 16.
“Once she went back and won (at Wangaratta), the more you reflect and watch her Sandown run, she loomed to win and she just didn’t run it out, so we’ll stick to the short course (distances),” Bourne said.
“It was a pretty easy decision (to go for the Lightning Stakes) after she won a Saturday race. Black type, why not? We see the mares at the sales, the black type is gold, really.”
Bourne, who has just nine named horses on the books, is a regular face at the Australasian weanling and yearling sales as part of his Network Bloodstock business of buying and selling horses, more often than not at the two-year-old sales.
The experience of sighting thousands of horses each year, much like the bloodstock agents, is something Bourne believes counts in his favour when trying to source quality racing prospects without the huge financial backing behind him.
“In a small way, I am heading to Adelaide for a stakes race on Saturday with a Mikki Isle filly who cost $50,000 and that’s the benefit from my bulk of work,” he said yesterday.
“Early in the season, I had a strangely named horse called Curly Burgin by Lucas Cranach who won races over the summer at Moonee Valley. He’s an $11,000 foal from Great Southern.
“All the horses that are winning in my stable are as a result of me doing my work and just trying to buy racehorses, really, and keeping myself in the market, so to speak.”
Bourne’s invaluable knowledge, which can only be gained from years of pounding the sales circuit from the Gold Coast, to Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, led to the trainer identifying Ojosan for her eventual owner Howard from the Goldin Farms draft at the Magic Millions sales complex at Morphettville in March 2020, just as the realisation came that Covid was about to become a major burden on society.
“Mike Howard is passionate about his racing and he’s a bit of a breeder. I can’t con him into a colt, so he’s a filly man as he’s got the breeding side of it,” Bourne said.
“I gave him a list of horses after going through the catalogue. He’s got his own theories on pedigrees and I am happy enough to say, ‘these are all (potentially) good racehorses, which ones do you like on pedigree?’. That’s how it works.
“I’ve trained a few for him, had a few winners and, luckily enough, she’s the first one I’ve actually bought for him.
“I reckon Mike’s got some sort of (computer) program that he interrogates. The easiest part we can look at is to say the mother was a stakes winner, but as broodmares, if they get winners, those mares tend to keep throwing them.
“Did we like Mikki Isle? That didn’t really come into the conversation for us as we loved the horse and, personally, anything Japanese is pretty good, I reckon. It’s pure blood and they breed a bloody good horse.”
Ojosan’s travelling companion will be stablemate Freddy Mac (Written Tycoon), a last-start Cranbourne placegetter who won at Echuca in June. Jason Holder will ride Ojosan while apprentice Alana Kelly has been booked to partner Freddy Mac.