Racing: O'Sullivan top professional to the core

By BARRY STREET

Michael Walker may be the whiz kid of New Zealand racing and again unbeatable for the jockeys' premiership.

But former 10-times champion Lance O'Sullivan retains his dignity and great respect, especially on premier racedays, as he underlined by riding four winners and two seconds at Te Rapa on Saturday.

O'Sullivan won both of the Cambridge Jockey Club's group and listed-race features, the $70,000 Travis Stakes on Cinder Bella and the $50,000 Sunline Stakes on Butterscotch.

That was no big deal, he suggested yesterday. Both horses were the best performed in their fields.

Just the same, Cinder Bella had sceptics who believed she had performed downright poorly in two unplaced runs in Sydney and, after all her recent travelling, could hardly have been expected to bounce back.

Levin trainer Karen Zimmerman had no worries on that score, though, and neither did O'Sullivan after he had ridden the usually fractious Cinder Bella in her preliminary.

"Karen told me she had come through her Sydney trip well - so well, in fact, it could have been the making of her," O'Sullivan said.

"She [Zimmerman] wasn't wrong."

Instead of behaving like a loony tune in the birdcage, Cinder Bella behaved perfectly, never sweated up and did an eye-catching preliminary, O'Sullivan said. She also remained composed behind the barriers.

Her two-and-a-quarter-length win over Regency and Country Rose was "super impressive."

Butterscotch also earned utmost respect from O'Sullivan, who had not ridden her before, because in dropping back from 1600m to 1200m she paraded a bit too fresh and sweated too freely.

She also had to start from seven stalls wider than the favourite, Sound The Alarm, a hollow winner of his previous race at Ellerslie.

Despite covering extra ground, Butterscotch gained her seventh win as a 3-year-old with a driving run to the line, O'Sullivan said, leaving Sound The Alarm well in her wake.

Trainer Jim Gibbs, of Matamata, has only one more race in mind for Butterscotch this season. That is a $13,000 1400m for 3-year-olds at Rotorua on May 12.

Cinder Bella will go for a winter spell after the $40,000 Cuddle Stakes, a group three 1600m, at Trentham next Saturday.

Sorrow rather than elation was O'Sullivan's mood after winning the main Cambridge sprint, the Presland Tocker Insurance 1400, on Kasman.

The handsome 4-year-old races with a tube in his throat after a respiratory operation a year ago.

"Fair dinkum, the day he finished third in Butterscotch's race, then known as the Cambridge Breeders' Stakes, he was stone-cold gone in the wind," O'Sullivan recalled.

"Only about three or four weeks before that he had galloped on [brother] Paul's private straight track in fantastic style, leaving the impression he was as good a mover as any horse I'd ridden.

"Today I can only feel sorrow for how good he might have been."

The main reasons for Kasman's powerful display on Saturday, the top jockey said, was because he raced without pain and after being very well looked after by the Paul O'Sullivan stable staff.

"Paul spaces his races well and never works him hard. He gallops only once between races and, even then, far from flat out."