Epsom Ace

Saiko, which translates to ‘the best’ in Japanese, lived up to his name as saddle artist Sandesh brought him with a thunderous gallop in the straight to peg back Shrishti in the last stride and lift the season’s piece de resistance – The Gaitform Calcutta Monsoon Derby -for veteran champion trainer Vijay Singh at RCTC on Saturday.

Trainer Aashay Doctor and his trusted knight Trevor combined fruitfully at RCTC on Saturday to bring home the bacon with a well-backed treble comprising Exceed, Morano and Live It Love It. However, several favourites fell by the wayside – most notably the Deepesh Narredu pair of Divine Run and Princess S.

It was an eventful afternoon of mid-week racing at Calcutta with intermittent showers making things rather difficult for professionals. Nevertheless two veteran trainers – Bharath Singh and Patrick Quinn – opened their accounts at the fag end of the brief season. While Bharath did it in style with a well-backed doublefor the JDG syndicate, Patrick did it by the skin of his teeth  in the very last race of the gloomy afternoon.