The three year-old colts and geldings maiden at Warwick Farm on Wednesday featured a smorgasbord of talented types with Pierro colt Les Vampires confirming his potential with an impressive win at his second start.
Trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, Les Vampires was a hot favourite when making his debut at Canterbury last month, but did a few things wrong that day that saw him finish third beaten half a length behind highly rated Godolphin colt Mural Crown.
He emerged fitter and wiser for the experience and gave Adam Hyeronimus an easy steer to lead for home and kick clear. Les Vampires won the 1200m maiden by more than a length over well fancied Encap and $1.9million Magic Millions sale-topper Suspect, who ran well on debut for third with heavily backed race favourite Carrazana in fourth place.
“It was good to see him bounce back as he has a lot of talent,” said Adrian Bott.
“He’s doing it quite naturally and is still pretty raw as you’ve seen, so I think there’s a lot of upside there.
“It was very pleasing how strong he was over that last 600m as they’ve run home quite sharply and he was very strong through the line and I think he’s got scope to get over a bit further and still has good physical improvement in him.”
A $200,000 Inglis Easter purchase from the Coolmore draft, Les Vampires is a full brother to multiple Group winner and Golden Slipper place-getter Tulip and half-brother to Group III winner Sacred Eye being the sixth winner from eight to race from Group III winning Rock of Gibraltar (IRE) mare Musidora.
Coolmore sold another Pierro colt from Musidora at Inglis Easter this year for $200,000 to Curran Bloodstock and she has a filly by Pierro to follow.
Pierro has very strong crops of two, three and four year-olds to run for him this season and stands at a fee of $82,500.