King Arthur, Yusoff hold court at trials

Yusoff Fadzli has, in the past, openly professed his “love” for King Arthur, calling him the best horse he had ever ridden.

Well, it was on Tuesday morning that he reaffirmed that affection when guiding the “King” to a resounding win at the trials.

Indeed. It could even be said that King Arthur brought him home.

Such was the ease of that victory over the 1,000m that Yusoff only had to point him in the direction of the winning post.

The rest was done by the “King”.

Like we had seen him do so many times before, King Arthur dictated the terms.

It was like, “since you guys are in my kingdom, you play by my rules”.

And what were his rules?

Well, on that Tuesday morning it was “respect”.

When he hit the front after covering just 200m, his rivals fell in line behind him.

And that was where they stayed – all neatly stacked up.

In that pack we had Dancing Light, Shihab, Italian Revolution and Invincible Tycoon.

They would eventually fill second to fifth spots in that order.

But it was all about King Arthur.

In fairness though, it was not a stellar force that he faced and the order of things dictated that King Arthur would win the trial.

After all, his rating of 105 put him head and shoulders above the rest, with Dancing Light being the next best at 67.

Still, it was a dominant win.

And yes again, Yusoff had every reason to have been satisfied with the showing of his great buddy.

King Arthur did the trip in 1min 0.46sec. It could easily have been a sub-60sec run – if urged along just a wee bit.

As it transpired, and even without any persuasion, King Arthur put 2½ lengths between himself and the leader of the chasing pack.

Second to Lim’s Kosciuszko in the Merlion Trophy on Feb 4, the Donna Logan-trained thoroughbred looks to be on target to add to the nine wins he has already put together for the Fortuna Racing NZ Stable.

Of the beaten brigade, Dancing Light looks most impressive.

With Vlad Duric doing the steering, he was unsighted on settling but quickly weaved a passage between horses to be second on straightening.

But he was never going to get a sniff of the leader and there he stayed until the finish.

An expensive purchase at the sales when he went under the hammer for around the sum of $200,000, Dancing Light has been steadily paying back that outlay.

To date, he has won in excess of $115,000 for the Tivic Stable.

That money came courtesy of his three wins and a couple of minor placings from just his nine race starts.

Dancing Light is a young horse, having turned four in August of 2022.

In the coming months, Tim Fitzsimmons – whose stable is teeming with talent – could have a lot of fun with this youngster.

In the only other trial of the morning, the Stephen Gray-trained February (Duric) nosed out Fitzsimmons’ Typhoon (Manoel Nunes) after a heads up-heads down showdown over the final 100m.

See Yah, the mount of Koh Teck Huat, took third a short head away.

If you must ask, the winner clocked a pedestrian time of 1min 3.93sec.