Old marvel Zipping has won the last three editions of the G2 Sandown Classic and he will start favourite to make it four this Saturday.

Zipping is racing in career-best form for Team Williams and trainer Robert Hickmott.  He cost $190,000 at the 2003 Inglis Easter yearling sale and has since amassed over $4.32 million from 15 wins and 10 placings in 45 starts.

After his third Sandown Classic, the old war-horse returned this year to win the G1 VRC Australian Cup and G1 VRC Turnbull Stakes.

Zipping (9g Danehill – Social Scene by Grand Lodge) is the first foal of an Irish bred mare who won at Sandown in England before immigrating here in August 1999.

Social Scene foaled Zipping first-up and she’s also delivered city winners by Encosta de Lago and Bel Esprit.  Her two year-old is a Fastnet Rock filly named Indifferent and she also has a yearling filly by Encosta de Lago.  

Her latest is a filly by Duke Of Marmalade foaled shortly after Zipping won the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington on October 3.  He was then runner-up in the Cox Plate before a fast-finishing fourth in the Melbourne Cup.

Zipping was bred by Adam Sangster’s Swettenham Stud and so was his stablemate Niblick who completed a hat-trick of his own on VRC Oaks day.

Niblick (Encosta de Lago) will be nominated for the G3 Eclipse Stakes at Sandown this Saturday.  “I would love to think Niblick is still going strong as a nine-year-old – just like Zipping,” Williams said at Flemington.  “He’s an enormous talent.”

Zipping is from the third-last Australian crop by breed shaper Danehill who died in May 2003 and runners by the Coolmore colossus are beginning to thin out.  

Danehill has been represented by 13 Hunter Valley bred starters so far this season and his only other winner, apart from Zipping, has been Roanoke who saluted at Coleraine in August.

A Sandown Classic trophy will continue Swettenham’s run of success in recent weeks.  Resident sire Hold That Tiger had Smiling Tiger finish third in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs on Saturday.

The previous week, Swettenham bred colt Roderic O’connor won the G1 Grand Criterium at Saint Cloud.  The Galileo colt became the 175th Group 1 winner to be bred or raced by the Sangster family.