CARLTON Watson’s four-year-old dark bay filly, Sergeant Reckless , left non-winners of three behind her with a workmanlike 1 ¼ lengths finish over 7 furlongs (1,400m) on the Thoroughbred Racing Hall-of-Fame Race Day at Caymanas Park on Saturday.

The filly’s trainer Wayne DaCosta was not in the winners’ enclosure to savour the victory but leading owner Carlton Watson was on hand to acknowledge the progress of his improving runner.

“Well, this victory is quite encouraging as she suffered a back injury at the latter part of last year and has made an encouraging start after recovery. The trainer put her down for a while so that the injury got time to heal. He then brought her back and gave her two sprint races.

“But from these two outings, Sergeant Reckless demonstrated that she did not want to sprint so, we tried seven furlongs today and it produced a fairly positive result. As she demonstrated she wanted a more relaxed pace, she did not want to be rushed and that is why we stretched her out a bit, so that she could relax and it worked,” said Watson.

From here on what is next for Sergeant Reckless? “For me, I can only expect further improvement but only the trainer can determine how this will be achieved but she has now won her third race and we will take it to step by step and see where she goes from here,” Watson added.

Sent off as the 2/1 favourite and ridden by Omar Walker, Sergeant Reckless ran 7 furlongs in a time of 1:28.3 in the field of 10 as Hot Ice was declared a late non-starter and won from the challenging 13/1 chance Sendamessagetomama, with Daniel Satchell.

A neck away third was the recently disqualified winner Virtuoso, ridden by the leading rider, apprentice Christopher Mamdeen.