The four-year-old might have lost his unbeaten record – albeit only by the skin of his teeth – but he lost nothing else in a performance that confirmed his potential star quality.
For much of the race 22-1 shot Milton looked like bringing off another of his now-famous front-running shocks with Gavin Lerena conjuring a bit more each time he looked under threat.
Last Winter
Indeed, when Anthony Delpech started niggling early in the straight, those who made Last Winter 12-10 favourite were preparing to tear up their tickets.
Even 100m out – by which time he was really motoring – he was eight lengths adrift and he was still five lengths down 50m from home. But Milton was tiring as fast as the favourite was quickening and had the line been half a stride later the short head verdict would have gone the other way.
Delpech said: “This is a good horse but I got caught behind horses that weren’t going forward. I never hit him – I would only have unbalanced him in the wind – and he was giving me everything anyway.”
Dean Kannemeyer, yet to win the Met, has typically been weighing up every step of the way as assiduously as a mountaineer nearing the peak of Mount Everest.
He said: “I am still keeping things open but I don’t think he will run in the Queen’s Plate and there is now a great possibility that he will go straight into the Met. I would like him to have won but I was very pleased with the way he finished. He really took off in the last furlong and, bar the winner, he spit the rest of them out.”
For Milton’s owner-trainer though it was one of the biggest wins of a long career handling only horses belonging to himself and wife Christine. It was also a perfect end to a difficult week.
The 82-year-old explained: “I was in hospital on Monday to have stents put into my heart and I then had a reaction to the medication. I might now have another think about going for the Met with Milton but I doubt it even though I’ve got no other races for him. I had been thinking of a Pinnacle in PE !”
Justin Snaith will run Sunshine Sweepstake Victress winner Star Express in both the Maine Chance Farms Paddock Stakes and the Klawervlei Majorca while Mahal TV Cape Summer Stayers winner Strathdon (owner-bred by the Fosters) will attempt to make it five in a row in the Chairman’s Cup on 6 January.
By Michael Clower
