The second of two feature races at the Gold Coast Friday Metropolitan meeting … the $150 000 Goldmarket … provided the closest of finishes when the Tony Gollan trained Garibaldi got up in the very last stride to snare the Jack Bruce trained Axe in the shadow of the post.
Axe had set out from the break to try to make every post a winning one and, when he shook off Wisdom Of Water and accelerated enough to keep Gogal at bay shortly after straightening … and kicked on … for a good part of the straight it looked like Jim Byrne had carried out the frontrunning plan to perfection.
Certainly, with 150m left to run, you wouldn’t have bet against Axe getting the prize.
But Garibaldi, wasn’t quite done yet.
Once Garibaldi managed to slip past Gogal, who was crowding him a little to his outside, Garibaldi relished being in clear air and Maloney quickly had him lengthening his stride with meaning and the son of I Am Invincible started to close dramatically on Axe with every stride.
It then all became a question of whether Garibaldi had run out of time, or not.
In the end, had Garibaldi arrived one stride later, the race would indeed have gone to Axe, but he arrived right on cue to claim an inch-perfect victory from the luckless Axe who was only just denied what would have been a first-up feature race success.
Tony Gollan also saddled the third placed Ef Troop.
