But the win was not as impressive as in his past victories as the four-year-old charger by Hazm out of Wind In My Hair needed to come up with a second wind down the stretch to blow away Batangas Entry and re-stake his claim to racing greatness.
He was timed 2:13.5 over the 2,050-meter distance, half-a-second slower than his win in the Presidential Gold Cup two weeks ago, with jockey Pat Dilema obliging to give his mount heavy whips in the last 150 meters to ensure the victory that, in one stretch, had been put in doubt.
Batangas Entry, a noted sprinter forced to back off in favor of Sun City’s faster pace majority of the race, sneaked by the rail at the far turn and wrested the lead from Wind Blown, triggering a wild roar from the gallery that had been used to seeing the massive-built galloper streaking to a string of victories virtually unopposed.
But this time, Wind Blown found a worthy rival.
He had actually beaten Batangas Entry by six lengths a fortnight ago, but the Paolo Mendoza-owned charger, slowly but surely emerging as one of the horses to watch, proved he had the stamina and talent to surprise even the best and the biggest horse in the fold.
Benefiting from the relatively slow pace, Wind Blown stormed past Sun City at the backstretch and appeared headed for another runaway win. But Batangas Entry, with jockey Miguel Recosana needing to pull back his mount at the clubhouse bend that somehow disrupted his momentum, sneaked by the rail and engaged Wind Blown to a neck-and-neck duel before wresting the lead as they entered the homestretch. — With reports from Ramon Romualdez