3 minute read
Hard work has paid off for jockey Amirul Ismadi after he steered War Star to his first win in the $20,000 Open Maiden race (1200m) on Saturday.
Although the Ipoh-born rider has not ridden War Star in all his four previous starts, he was the one who took the reins at his morning trackwork since he started working for trainer Jason Ong two months ago.
The daily grind has not gone unnoticed. Though the Singaporean trainer had no lack of other jockeys like Koh Teck Huat, Manoel Nunes, Bruno Queiroz and Zyrul Nor Azman, he is now supporting Amirul with rides too.
Amirul returned the favours with his first winner for Ong last Saturday, My Boss, and now followed by War Star seven days later.
After a clean jump from barrier seven, War Star settled one-off the fence in third, following closely behind leader Roger Roger (Ronnie Stewart) and Volcanic (Bruno Queiroz).
Turning for home, the $11 favourite raced past the two weakening leaders in no time. Windfall (Rozlan Nazam), who came from behind, was whacking away down the middle, but came too late. War Star won by a length.
Are You Happy (Iskandar Rosman) ran third another three parts of a length away. The winning time was 1 min 12.51secs for the 1200m on the Polytrack.
Amirul was rather impressed with the Super One three year old's run on Saturday.
"I worked on him every day throughout his prep from the start and he's been improving ever since," said the Malaysian hoop of his seventh win this season.
"He's always been a straightforward horse, so all I did was to save him up for the straight.
"His run was incredible today. I didn't expect him to have that huge turn of foot, but no other runners caught up with him either.
"Now he's learning and maturing. If everything goes well, he can go further in future, like the 1400m.
"Turf is still a question mark, so I think keeping him to the Polytrack now would be good."
War Star was unplaced on turf at his first two starts but improved significantly with a third and a second at his last two runs on the all-weather surface.
He was partnered by jockey Wong Chin Chuen then, but while the latter sat out this meeting due to personal commitments back home in Kedah, Ong said he would still have given the ride to Amirul.
"Amirul rides him in trackwork every day, so he deserved the ride for his hard work done on the horse," said Ong, who leads on 52 wins after he hit a personal best in a day (see later report) with Dragon Master ($11), Healthy Baby ($13), Top Field ($14) and Akhtar ($10) also winning their respective races on Saturday.
"I was a bit worried that he was caught wide because the plan was to lead, but credit to Amirul who took his own initiative in the running.
"I thought he (War Star) would get a decent weight, but he got a nice light weight instead (51kgs after Amirul's one-kilo claim)."
Bought for A$25,000 as a two-year-old at the Inglis 2022 Ready2Race Sale, War Star has now earned close to $20,000 in prizemoney for the War Star stable.
