Bentley Biscuit Off to England After Aussie Success

Gai Waterhouse, celebrating a grand group I treble of the final day of the Randwick Fall meeting, will attempt her first training success in England with Bentley Biscuit this summer.

Bentley Biscuit secured his English trip with a second group I victory on successive Saturdays.

The 5-year-old Peintre Celebre gelding won the All-Aged Stakes (Aus-I) by 1 1/4 lengths to provide the trainer with her 82nd career group I win.

Nash Rawiller was stuck in traffic with only three of the ten runners behind him 300 meters out. Yet, when in the clear out wider, deeper into the stretch, he motored home to again defeat Black Ink (10-1). The runner-up had been second to him in the T.J. Smith Stakes (Aus-I) on a soggy opening day April 7.

Malcolm (7-2), another son of Snippets, nailed third another length away after losing his footing in a soft patch at the top of the lane.

Takeover Target, a graded winner in Australia, England and Japan in 2006, returned to the track with a battling fifth, 4 1/4 lengths from the winner.

It was Takeover Target’s first race since his Sprinters’ Stakes (Jpn-I) triumph on Oct. 1, in the interim returning positive Hong Kong tests to hydroxyprogesterone.

Joe Janiak had intended the winner of AUS$3.6 million to resume in the T.J. Smith, but a virus forced a revision.

The 1,400 meters — run in 1:24.07 — on a damp oval was a big ask first-up for the $1,300 purchase, all but one of his 13 wins below the distance.

Bentley Biscuit should provide added weight to the assault on the major English sprints by Takeover Target and Miss Andretti.

Waterhouse wanted to run him in the Doncaster (Aus-I), in which he was third last year. But her London-based co-owner George Mooratoff overruled her in favor of the two group I events he won, adding AUS$600,000 to double his earnings to almost $1.2 million.

Until now Waterhouse has been a spectator to English racing, but the 'Biscuit’s quest for the Golden Jubilee (Eng-I) gives her a working holiday.

Rawiller replaced Hugh Bowman as Waterhouse’s first jockey in Sydney — and with a bang — three group I wins in his first week. Bowman is about to start a three-month riding stint in England and will likely be reunited with the Biscuit at Ascot and Goodwood.