Mallesh Narredu’s Be Safe put up an expected performance in The Kingfisher Derby Bangalore 2014 on Sunday. The graceful colt cantered around the track to bag the glittering trophy along with the richest purse ever offered by The Bangalore Turf Club. His fluent strides in the final furlong made it look very easy. Even though there have been many runaway victories over the years in The Kingfisher Derby, this would surely be one of the easiest that we have witnessed in this event. Twelve three year olds had accepted to run in this year’s Derby. As compared to Be Safe, most of them were relatively inexperienced. The colt had won five out of six starts in his short career. The only time he had been beaten on a race track was in The Poonawalla Multimillion at Mumbai. Those who had witnessed the race were unanimous in their opinion that Be Safe had been really unlucky to lose that day. After encountering numerous traffic problems in the back-stretch, he had rallied late to lose by a very short margin to Shivalik Storm. After his arrival at Bangalore, the colt had put on a lot of condition. By winning a Juvenile Million and The Colts Championship Stakes comfortably , he had served notice of his superiority. There were no doubts about his stamina. Be Safe had an ability to accelerate from any position and it was felt that the mile and a quarter in The Kingfisher Derby would be ideally suited to his style of running. Since he had beaten most of his opponents on earlier occasions, it was difficult to visualize any of them reversing the pattern. Amongst the fillies , Alexandra Mills was considered to be better than Tiger Tops and Culebra. The former had ended many lengths ahead of the others in The Fillies Championship. However, the bookmakers were extremely reluctant to offer a price on Be Safe. The heavy underfoot conditions made no difference to their opinion about this runner. He started as a miserly 40/100 favourite on Sunday. While Alexandra Mills and Tiger Tops were offered at 12/1, you could literally write your own card on the others.
29 сен 2024
