Colts’ Nursery is the ‘Mike and Dave’ show!

MIKE de Kock and Dave Maclean on Saturday won the Gr2 SA Nursery over 1160m at Turffontein for the second year running, following Frosted Gold’s 2019 success, with Mount Pleasant (AUS), who ran on well to beat stablemate Najem Suhail by a length. He posted a winning time of 67.52s, almost 1s faster than the smart Springs Of Carmel, who won the Fillies Nursery earlier in the day.

Now, Mike and Dave will be discussing an overseas campaign for Mount Pleasant, a well-moving two-year-old colt described as “a real solid rock of a horse”.

“I’d like to get both runners on the first plane out of here,” said Mike. “They should be running where they can capatalise on their value. The second horse will definitely be shipped.”

He added about Najem Suhail: “He looks like a 6-furlong specialist but he saw out the 1200m today, he is still immature and ran around a bit. He’s got his races to win.”

Mount Pleasant, who’d won his debut coming from a few lengths off the pace, was always going to be chasing his very fast stablemate in this race and had three lengths to find with 450m to go, but he caught up with him at the 200m-pole, kept running strongly and won by a length.

Jockey Callan Murray was suitably impressed, saying: “He raced with more maturity today, got in behind them and I could ride more of a race on him. He accelerated and ran well to the line.”

Mount Pleasant is by Vancouver (Medaglia D’Oro), from Life In A Metro (AUS) by Fastnet Rock (AUS), and has earned R126,000 in two starts.  He and Najem Suhail are graduates of the Inglis Melbourne Sale where, incidentally, Frosted Gold was also acquired.

“That’s a happy hunting ground for us, “ said Mike.