Birch Bros’ inform stallion Gold Standard had a memorable feature race double this weekend, with one daughter, Gold Poker Game, winning Friday’s Listed Lady’s Bracelet and another daughter, Hold My Hand, claiming Saturday’s G3 Summer Fling Stakes at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth.
Classy four-year-old Hold My Hand was all the rage for Saturday’s G3 Summer Fling Stakes and was dispatched a warm favourite for the 2000m contest. Under Richard Fourie, the Glen Kotzen trained filly hit the front full of running but had to pull out all the stops to hold off a fast-finishing Future Girl and score by nearly half a length.
Bred and owned by Drakenstein Stud, as is Summer Fling runner-up Future Girl, Hold My Hand had shown top-class form last season when running third in both the G1 World Sports Cape Fillies Guineas and G2 World Sports Betting Fillies Guineas.
Hold My Hand, who is out of the Holy Roman Emperor mare Fly To The Moon, has now won twice and she has earned more than R550 000 in prize money.
Beaten just over a length and a half when fourth in the G3 Splashout Victress Stakes last time out, Gold Poker Game claimed her second Listed race triumph when claiming Friday’s Listed Lady’s Bracelet.
Under Gareth Wright, the Candice Bass-Robinson trained filly raced towards the back of the field for much of Friday’s race but flew up from last to get up and win impressively by three parts of a length.
Bred and owned by Drakenstein Stud, Gold Poker Game has now won five of 14 starts.
Gold Poker Game, promoted to first in the 2023 Listed Ardmore Jamaica Handicap, is out of the Skip Away mare Skip Poker and is a three-part sister to the Trippi sired G3 Winter Derby winner LIquid Mercury.
Her sire Gold Standard had only 25 runners in his first crop, which produced 15 winners including G3 Hollywoodbets Diana Stakes winner Golden Hostess as well as the aforementioned pair of Gold Poker Game and Hold My Hand.
A son of former champion sire Trippi, whose son Charles Dickens won the recent G1 L’Ormarins King’s Plate so impressively, G2 Selangor Cup winner Gold Standard has a single lot on offer at the upcoming Cape Racing Premier Yearling Sale, and three lots on offer at the Cape Yearling Sale.