HORSE RACING

THE Pinecliff training centre in Mount Eliza has provided yet another Blue Diamond winner with Daumier digging deep for the Anthony and Sam Freedman yard to win the feature juvenile race on Saturday 26 February.

Hidden away just above the Sunnyside North Beach in Mt Eliza, the Freedman partnership have utilised Pinecliff and its private racetracks as well as their Flemington stables to dominate the two-year-old contest in recent years.

The remarkable run has seen four of the last five Group 1 Blue Diamond winners come through the state-of-the-art set-up with the Freedman-trained Hanseatic also finishing a narrow second in 2020.

Since Grahame Begg’s homebred colt Written By claimed the juvenile sprint in 2018 when stabled at the Pinecliff base, the Freedman partnership has won the race with Lyre (2019), Artorius (2021) and now Daumier (2022).

The Godolphin-owned Daumier had to show plenty of fight to fend off Revolutionary Miss and race-favourite Jacquinot, but with the addition of the blinkers, managed to cling on to win narrowly by a nose. 

Co-trainer Sam Freedman said the success was a culmination of the hard work put in behind the scenes.

“I’m just proud of the whole team,” Freedman said post-race. “It’s been a fair sort of build up to this but the staff at Pinecliff and Flemington, I stand up here and do the interviews after a win like this but they’re doing all the hard work.”

“They work their arse off to get these sorts of results so it’s a big thrill.”

Following a similar blueprint to Artorius’ win last year, Freedman said they needed to find something to be in the finish on Saturday, and the blinkers certainly did the trick.

“We needed to find a couple of lengths today. It was the same story with probably Artorius last year, you need to find something, and he worked super in [blinkers] on Tuesday. You’ve got to be right at the top of your game and thankfully he was today,” he said.

Daumier is spending a few days out in the paddock before potentially pushing on and heading towards the Golden Slipper in Sydney on March 19.

First published in the Mornington News – 1 March 2022