Elvira debuts in style
AS the two-year-old season continues to unfold, the Wayne DaCosta-trained Elvira dropped her name with a thud into the pool of those to watch with an eye-catching debut yesterday at Caymanas Park.
Racing in the annual renewal of the Winnie Anglin Memorial Cup toting the red and white silks of the Terrible Tout and jockey Dick Cardenas, Elvira (Porto Santo – Diablo Forever) shot from the number two post position and after playing around with Playback and Kesteen, pulled away for an easy win, nine-and-a-half lengths in front of her nearest rival Playback. The final time of 1:01.1 minutes for 1,000 metres round while not anything to shout about was enough for a first run to warrant attention. Trainer DaCosta, however, had a different view on the final time.
“Elvira raced in the first race of the day with a stiff breeze blowing in her face coming down the straight, so I am very comfortable with the win and I thought the final time was pretty good. Elvira is bred to sprint, the task now is to watch her progress closely and see how she develops and if she will be able to deal with the longer races,” DaCosta said.
This is the first crop of horses racing for the stallion Porto Santo who is now deceased. The bay filly was bred by YS (1955) Limited. After the win jockey Cardenas commented: “I was confident of victory as Elvira is a really good horse in the making.”
The DaCosta, Cardenas combination highlighted the day’s proceedings with each sharing the same three winners, Elvira, Fortuneonehundred and This Is It. Cardenas, who started the day two wins (73-71) in front of Dane Nelson moved further ahead courtesy of his double. He now leads Nelson by three in the revved-up race for jockeys’ honours. Nelson rode two winners, Bigbrowngreyhope in the third race and Beckham in the fourth race.