Goldman shakes off monkey with Hellbent’s daughter scoring maiden win
Kurt Goldman, who trained Group 1-winning sprinter Hellbent (I Am Invincible) in his first seven starts, has provided the promising first season Yarraman Park Stud sire with his tenth two-year-old winner for the season and the Goulburn horseman believes the best is yet to come from both his horse and the stallion.
The talented Goldman-trained Negation (2 f ex Gloray by Street Hero), who was tested in lead-up races to the Magic Millions 2YO Classic (RL, 1200m) late last year, sustained a long run to score narrowly in a fillies and mares maiden (1200m) at Goulburn yesterday.
Goldman was relieved “to get the monkey off the back” with the daughter of his flag-bearing horse Hellbent who would clinch his Group 1 victory for Victorian trainer Darren Weir in the 2018 William Reid Stakes (1200m).
“She always showed enough promise in the early days to suggest she’d be going out and winning races, so she’s been a bit frustrating, to be honest. It almost seemed like she was trialling a lot better and she wasn’t really producing what we were seeing at the trials on race day,” Goldman told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“She has come back well this preparation and we got the maiden win out of the way today.
“It was a drop back in grade for her but it was still a pretty tough effort to come back to a handicap for a two-year-old filly to take on those horses, it wasn’t a set weights race.”
Ridden by Andrew Adkins, Negation defeated three-year-old Lady Fraulein (Panzer Division) by a neck with another three-year-old, Edna (Stratum Star), a further half-length away in third at just her fourth race start.
“Even though she’d drawn out [in barrier nine of 11] I was happy to come to this race just because of the way Goulburn has been playing the last few weeks, basically it’s almost a race to the outside fence, so when she drew poorly I was still happy to run,” he said.
“It is not how we train horses, we don’t go out of our way to teach horses to come to the outside fence, so I think she had a really good look at [the outside rail].
“I think she was a little bit reluctant to race in that restricted room but once she had the measure of that horse, Ciaron Maher’s horse [Lady Fraulein] on the inside, she was never going to get beaten.”
A half-brother to two-time winner and the now Hong Kong-based Dream Pursuer (Moshe), Negation was purchased by Goldman for $50,000 from the 2021 Magic Millions Adelaide Yearling Sale from the Grenville Stud draft.
The filly races in the maroon, white armband and cap colours – the same silks adorned by Hellbent – of her late owner Alan Cardy who died in a tragic fall at his Sydney home late last year.
“I bought six yearlings, only three of them have been to the races and two of them have won [Negation and Pierro filly Strangeless]. It is an exciting crop of horses and it’s unfortunate that Alan’s not here to enjoy it with me,” Goldman said.
“It is a nice feeling to be able to go and buy horses that you want to train and have them come out and win races and they all look like they’re only going to get better with time.”
Hellbent, who will stand for an unchanged fee of $22,000 (inc GST) this year, has sired six winners so far this month, propelling him to ten individual winners to be second only to Newgate Farm’s Russian Revolution (Snitzel) who has sired 14. He has had three stakes-placed horses from his 38 runners so far.
“I have been a big supporter of him and sent some mares to him, and I am obviously biased due to my connection with the horse, but he only raced once as a two-year-old himself, which was this time of year, and he raced on until he was five and that shows the quality of horse that he was,” Goldman said.
“He wasn’t a gun two-year-old who couldn’t go on with it, he was a good two-year-old who just got better as time went on and I think his progeny are probably going to do the same thing.
“I think it is exciting times for Yarraman and the guys there. Alan [Cardy’s estate] still owns shares in Hellbent and we’re hoping he can do the job at stud.”