Overpass secures his maiden Group 1 with a thrilling Winterbottom win
Baker and Darby Racing team up to secure their second elite-level race of the season
Overpass earned his Golden Slipper Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m)-winning sire, Vancouver (Medaglia D’Oro), his first Group 1 victory, sealed trainer Bjorn Baker’s first multiple top-tier season, and also booked a third trip to Perth in defence of his Quokka (1200m) crown with a dominant triumph in yesterday’s Winterbottom Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m).
Ridden masterfully by regular partner Josh Parr, the five-year-old atoned for an out-of-character last-start flop when fancied in The Everest (1200m) with a seventh career win which takes his earnings past $5.6 million, and brought Darby Syndications their seventh top-level success.
Jumping from gate ten of 16, the Corumbene Stud-bred gelding charged to the outside of leader Savatoxl (Kuroshio) and, taken out to the middle of the Ascot straight after turning for home, bounded clear to have the $1.5 million WFA feature in his keeping at the 200-metre mark.
Over the same course and distance as his most lucrative performance – holding on to score by a nose from the outstanding Amelia’s Jewel (Siyouni) in April’s inaugural $4 million slot race The Quokka – this time Overpass had a length and a quarter to spare on the line from the Dion Luciani-trained Oscar’s Fortune (Rich Enuff). Luke Fernie’s Ripcord (Written By) was almost a length further back in third.
Minutes after the victory, Darby Racing and slot-holder RAM Racing confirmed Overpass would be back at Ascot to seek back-to-back Quokkas in April, when the race will be worth $5 million.
Baker, the Warwick Farm-based New Zealand expat, was ecstatic after taking Perth’s feature black type sprint. It was the trainer’s sixth career Group 1 and secured him multiple top-level victories in a season for the first time, following Darby colt Ozzmosis’s (Zoustar) win in Flemington’s Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) last month.
“It’s an amazing race,” Baker said of the Winterbottom. “It’s been won by four Australian international superstars – Takeover Target, Miss Andretti, Ortensia and Buffering. To win this race is pretty amazing and with Darby racing – [it’s] very special.
“Josh Parr rode him like the best horse, and what a year he’s had. He won the Golden Eagle (on Obamburumai), won the Quokka. He’s a big race rider. This horse deserves it, no doubt.”
Overpass, who claimed his second stakes victory following last year’s ATC Expressway Stakes (Gr 2, 1200m) at Rosehill, is from the second crop of Vancouver, who is standing his second season at Woodside Park for $11,000 (inc GST), having relocated to the Victorian farm in 2022 after starting his career in the breeding barn at Coolmore.
The 11-year-old has five Australian stakes-winners from 235 runners. Worldwide he has ten from 380, amid 247 winners, having shuttled to Europe in 2015 and the US in 2016 and 2017.
Aside from Overpass, he has sired four Group / Grade 2 winners, including Madone, who won hers at Del Mar in the US in 2021, and Mount Pleasant, who won twice at the second tier in South Africa in 2020.
Bred by Corumbene’s owner George Altomonte, Overpass was a bargain $75,000 purchase for Darby and Will Johnson Bloodstock at the special Round 2 of the Covid-hit Inglis Easter Yearling Sale.
In a year of sales hit by the pandemic, he was first offered in the 2020 online Easter sale but passed in, before being sold at the in-person second round of that auction three months later.
“That was explosive today,” his syndicator’s chief Scott Darby told Sky Thoroughbred Central. “There was a lot of pressure being the favourite. In The Quokka, he was a 10- or 12-to-one shot, but that (today) was brilliant.”
Confirming Overpass would again be RAM’s slot horse in next year’s Quokka, Darby quipped: “I think he’s become a WA horse.”
Overpass has become a hit in Perth, and comes with a West Australian twist. He’s the fifth foal of Exceed And Excel (Danehill) mare Walkway, a two-time winner whose dam, Boardwalk Bell (Bellotto), was a half-sister to the great WA hero Northerly (Serheed) and two other stakes-winners.
Walkway and Corumbene have formed a habit of producing bargains through Inglis sales. The dam’s colt by Capitalist (Written Tycoon) was the absolute lowest-priced lot at this year’s Easter sale. NSW-based Frampton Racing now owns a half-brother to a $5.6 million-winning Group 1 victor, and he cost them $25,000.
Following the earlier successes of Overpass, Walkway produced a sister to the sprinter this season and was covered by another Golden Slipper Stakes winner in Stay Inside (Extreme Choice) in October.
Parr said after yesterday’s race he was “so proud” of Overpass, who led and weakened into tenth in The Everest on October 14, despite firming from $10 to $9.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been more confused after a race than after The Everest,” Parr said in his post-race interview.
“I was so confident going into that race, but something wasn’t right. We didn’t see the speed or the turn of foot that he has.
“But when I saw him here yesterday after I arrived in Perth, I reported back to my team I was very thrilled to see the condition he was in, and he’s backed that up.
“That’s the turn of speed this horse has when he’s right.
“I’m so proud of this horse. He’s deserved a Group 1 victory for some time now, and he’s just kept raising the bar.”
The win brought Parr a tenth career Group 1 and was a breakthrough for Overpass after six attempts at the top tier, including a long-neck second to Giga Kick (Scissor Kick) in the Doomben 10,000 (Gr 1, 1200m) in May.
Though conceding he had become concerned by the high number of horses charging home to win through Ascot’s first eight races yesterday, Parr was pleased he stuck with a plan made early on the day to go some eight horses wide in the straight.
“I’ve watched race after race with horses sitting back off the speed and swooping down the track, and to be honest, it was really starting to play on my mind,” the 36-year-old said.
“I’m really pleased to be able to come out and trust the horse’s ability to race forward and put the race to sleep.
“I had a good look at the track earlier this morning. Even though we’ve got a really dry circuit, the inside is really lush and really long grass. I thought there was faster ground because of shorter grass out in the middle, and then the pattern (of the day) back that up.”