Gooree Pastoral owner Eduardo Cojuangco claimed a feature double with Smart Missile (G2 Todman Slipper) and Older Than Time (LR Sky High Stakes) at Rosehill on Saturday.

Smart Missile (2c Fastnet Rock – Comical Smile by Comic Strip) defeated boom colt Sepoy in a performance that saw his Golden Slipper odds tumble from $21 to $5.50.  

Cojuangco had a Golden Slipper in his grasp with Crowned Glory until Belle Du Jour swooped to a last-stride victory in 2000.  “He’s the best two-year-old I’ve trained,” Anthony Cummings said at Rosehill.  “He was giving away experience and will improve on that into the Slipper.”

Smart Missile was the first winner from Fastnet Rock’s third crop when he scored a one length victory in the Listed Breeders’ Plate at Randwick in October.  He is a younger half-brother to the Sydney winners Emotional Outburst (Johannesburg) and Kiss From a Rose (Encosta de Lago).  

Cojuangco bred them from an unraced half-sister to his stakes winners Northern Meteor (Encosta de Lago), Queen Of The Hill (Danehill) and Rabbuka (Giant’s Causeway).

Gooree Pastoral mare Older Than Time looked beaten in the LR Sky High Stakes when headed by Luen Yat Forever in the straight.  Finding plenty under pressure, she fought back to defeat the Macau galloper by a nose.

Older Than Time (4m Don Eduardo – Up The Hill by Danehill) is a lightly raced mare with just nine runs under her belt.  She has won five of them and trainer Gai Waterhouse will keep stepping her up in distance during the autumn carnival.

“She is a very good mare in the making,” Waterhouse claimed.  “It was her first go in a black-type race and she’s heading towards the Sydney Cup.”
Her sire Don Eduardo came within a length of winning last year’s Sydney Cup when his mare Divine Rebel was runner-up to Jessicabeel.

Older Than Time is from an unraced sister Melbourne stakes performer Assafa.  Her family is full of Danehill stakes winners the calibre of Langoustine (G2 VRC Maribyrnong Plate) and One World (G3 VRC Thoroughbred Breeders Stakes).

Waterhouse also prepares promising Encosta de Lago colt Needs Further for Gooree.  He is unbeaten this preparation and will be nominated for the G2 Tulloch Stakes on April 2.  He is a son of Crowned Glory!