Light The Lights winning in Dubai in 2017. Image: Dubai Racing Club
South African-bred Light The Lights provided champion trainer Mike de Kock with his first win of the 2018 Dubai World Cup Carnival when he triumphed over a high class field at Meydan on Thursday.
Making his second appearance of the Carnival, Light The Lights accelerated impressively to win the Mubadala Global Trophy over 2000 metres. Ridden by record breaking champion jockey Christophe Soumillon, the six-year-old gelded son of Western Winter ran on smartly to score a neck win –despite conceding runner up Blair House no less than 5kgs.
After the win, Soumillon commented, “Mike is a very good trainer, as we all know, and would not be running this horse back after just a week if he was not happy he could produce a run like that. He needed that comeback run last week and I was always pretty happy, but Blair House came there going very strongly, so we had to fight.
This is not a horse who wants to be in front too long, so I was happy to have a rival and a battle because that suits him. He should build on this and go back up in class.”
Racing in the famed yellow and blue silks of Sheikh Mohammed Bin Khalifa Al Maktoum, Light The Lights has now won twice in Dubai, having captured the Listed Singspiel Stakes at Meydan last year.
The son of triple champion sire Western Winter won three times in South Africa, including the Gr2 Peninsula Handicap with Light The Lights also finishing fourth in the 2016 G1 J&B Met.
Bred by Anne and Bruce Nicholas of Hallmark Thoroughbreds, Light The Lights, whose half-brother Pack Leader is set to contest the 2018 Gr1 Investec Cape Derby, was a R450 000 buy from the 2013 National Yearling Sale.
Light The Lights is by Western Winter out of brilliant broodmare First Arrival – the dam of UK export and Equus award winners In The Fast Lane and Rock The Country, as well as Let’s Rock ‘n Roll and Beat Patrol. This is the family of Trademark and Morisco.
A Silvano half-sister to Light The Lights has been entered for the 2018 National Yearling Sale.
-extract bsa.co.za
