WHILE Superluminal’s seasonal debut ended in an encouraging victory, trainer Ian Parsard pointed out that his charge has health issues which makes his competitive career a bit difficult and as such is taking each performance in stride.

Parsard’s declaration came shortly after Superluminal successfully navigated a three-year-old and upwards Open Allowance event to land the Alexander Hamilton Trophy over a mile (1,600 metres) on the 10-race card at Caymanas Park on Saturday last, February 2, 2019.

The short-head victory by Superluminal (Natural Selection- Thousand Hills) was the seven-year-old bay horse’s second on the trot.

Parsard was cautiously optimistic.

“Every single race that he runs, we have to manage him ( Superluminal) very carefully. He has a couple of issues that we have been dealing with for years, so it is all about how we look after him and get him to be on the track to do what he does best for a long time.

“ Superluminal is one of those horses that you have to work with very hard, so for us it is just one step at a time with him because we really just have to manage him very carefully to get the most out of him,” Parsard informed.

Parsard knows all too well that actual success on race day, comes down to both horse and jockey being happy, so it was left to former champion jockey Omar Walker to get the best of Superluminal during Saturday’s assignment.

Walker did just that with an enterprising ride that propelled Superluminal to a nail-biting win, after disposing of the Rowan Mathie-trained odds on favourite Another Vigorous (Dane Nelson), in the early stages of the six-horse event and when it was necessary to move in the straight, Walker asked the question and Superluminal responded positively with enough left in the tank to stave off the late rush of Gary Subratie’s Saratoga Sight (Aaron Chatrie).

Superluminal won in a tidy 1:38.3, behind splits of 24.2, 47.0 and 1:10.4. Hover Craft (Tevin Foster) was third.

“It was really nerve-wracking because the horse was really coming up on the inside, but I figured the ‘Champ’ [Walker] would get it right and he did.

“It was a very tricky race because if you left Another Vigorous alone on the lead, he could slip away and the race would be over and if we were to challenge Another Vigorous you are at risk of being caught by Hover Craft and Saratoga Sight which is exactly what played out,” Parsard noted.

“We were fortunate today (Saturday) with the light weight to get home and it was a very good ride by Walker and that is because a lot of the preparation was done with him.

“He [Omar] knows him ( Superluminal) very well and we programmed him for this race. He got a very good work last week, so coming into this race, I knew we had a very good chance of winning because the handicaps were in our favour,” the trainer ended.