YANKEE Tango more than paid his way when he won Monday’s $22,000 Thread Effects Class 1 & Maiden Plate (2100m) at Tamworth.
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The Sally Torrens-trained gelding was perfectly ridden by Grant Buckley to spear down the middle of the track and score a neck win from the Sue Grills-trained Hammoon Dancer. Damien Lane’s Boston Blues was another neck away third.
“Couldn’t have ridden him any better,” Torrens said of Buckley’s winning effort.
“He told me before the race how he’d ride him and that’s how he did. He said he’d have him in a good spot because there were a few handy ones in it. And we’ll get a good idea of how he’s going too.”
She said having the favourite, We Can’t Be Beaten caught three wide for the first half of the race helped as well.
Buckley had ridden Yankee Tango at Dubbo when the four-year-old gelding son of All American finished a good second on debut for Torrens.
“I’ve ridden for Sally over the years,” Buckley said.
“Great to ride a winner for them.”
Torrens paid $7000 for Yankee Tiger and he is raced by her brother, Roger Torrens and his wife Ann.
“He picked up $4000 at Dubbo the other day and now $11,000 here. More than paid for himself,” she said.
She was “really happy” with his effort at Dubbo.
“He came through that run really well, never left a grain in his bin,” she said.
“I didn’t really want to run over 2100m after the mile but he wasn’t going to have another run for five weeks but he was jumping out of his skin after Dubbo.”
Manabar then came out an massacred his opposition on his way to a third successive win at Tamworth.
The Cody Morgan-trained gelding son of Manhattan Rain, who had won his previous two starts at Quirindi and Muswellbrook, was never headed when he won the $22,000 Jamieson Civil and Earthmoving Benchmark 58 Handicap by a remarkable eight and a half lengths.
Scone apprentice, Reece Jones, had his first ride on the six-year-old and let the gelding work to the lead from his wide (12) barrier.
“He hit the ground running,” Jones told Sky Thoroughbred Central.
The young apprentice didn’t realise he led by six or seven lengths at the 600m and allowed the gelding to run to the line hands and heels.
“I couldn’t hear anyone coming,” he added. That’s because they were in a different post code, spruiked racecaller Anthony Manton.
“He’s a machine,” the teenage jockey smiled.
Morgan trains the gelding at Tamworth and is also excited by Manabar’s explosive form.
After winning by four and half lengths at Quirindi he then won by just over three lengths at Muswellbrook.
Quirindi was over 1450m and Muswellbrook 1280m.
On Monday he was back to 1200m and relished that even more with the eight and a half length thrashing.
“He’s coming along really good,” Morgan added.
“We’ve been jumping him all week, just trying to do something different with him. We also put him in with a couple slow ones to get his confidence up.”
Whatever Cody and his brother Luke are doing they shouldn’t stop.
Just where the gelding goes now is uncertain although Cody feels another 1200m at Tamworth on February 26 might be his go.