Mark Minervini has trained more important feature race winners but few have meant as much to him as Hosier’s effort to score at Royal Randwick on Saturday.
Hosier showed his class to beat a good field of stayers in the Group 3 $250,000 Premier’s Cup (2000m).
This gave Minervini his first Randwick winner since moving his training base from Adelaide to Newcastle four years ago, and his first stakes success in just over a decade.
“It’s still a bit raw,” Minervini said immediately after the race.
“It sounds stupid but this is for South Australia, I reckon we get a bad wrap.
“There’s a lot of good trainers and horses and jockeys that come out of South Australia and I’ve really felt that since I’ve been up here for four years I’ve been trying to prove myself. And today it has worked out perfectly.”
Hosier ($5.50), ridden by Jason Collett, finished strongly to win by 1¼ lengths from the grey stayers Military Mission ($41) and Bois D’Argent ($14).
Collett felt like Hosier was always travelling like the winner.
“I just felt like I had control and it was a matter of making sure I didn’t go too early,” he said.
“A long way out but when they travel like that you question how long the fuse is. So you want to be holding as long as you can and he had enough there.”
Minervini purchased Hosier earlier this year and syndicated the seven-year-old gelding to some of his stable clients.
Jason Collett congratulates trainer Mark Minervini. Picture: Jeremy Ng/Getty Images
“I said to my owners, ‘there’s no doubt he’s a Saturday, city-grade horse and if we can’t win a race with him we should give it away’,” he said.
“He came to us in great order. I didn’t know him that well although he was trained at Newcastle but I obviously knew he was a quality horse.
“We’ve got a lot of young horses and we’ve got a lot of country and provincial horses, but we needed a Saturday city-grade horse.
“I’m proud of him. He’s a quirky horse, he’s got an unbelievable temperament and I’ve enjoyed the challenge of training him.
“I think there is still plenty more to come. I’d like to buy another four or five of them.”
Minervini said he will nominate Hosier for “everything in the spring”.
“Whether he goes to a Wyong Cup, Newcastle Cup, Caulfield Cup, ‘Tin’ Cup, whatever, we’ll find a race for him for sure,” he said.
By Ray Thomas at Racenet
Story first appeared HERE