FOUR-year-old gelding Mitraad (AUS) posted his third win from four starts when taking a Graduation Plate over 1400m at Turffontein on Saturday.
Randall Simons steered Mitraad to a half-a-length success over Majestic Bay and assistant trainer Mathew de Kock feels there will be more to come from Sheikh Hamdan’s charge, whose only defeat thus far came at the hands of the talented Zambezi River.
“Mitraad is lightly-raced and he has heart, he likes to fight which is a good trait. I’m not sure if he’ll stay further than a mile, we’ll see how he progresses this season. If he picks up another race soon we may consider a feature race for him.”
The Aussie-breds tend to improve with maturity and Mitraad has an interesting pedigree. He is by Northern Meteor, a deceased son of Encosta De Lago, from a mare by multiple champion sire O’Reilly. Northern Meteor (himseld from a mare by Redoute’s Choice) was considered a champion stallion in the making before his untimely death at the age of eight years due to a bad bout of colic in 2013.
Mitraad is one of just a handful of Norther Meteors that will grace the racetrack in the next few years – perhaps he will turn out to be something special still.
