Encryption’s high-quality son Cifrado landed stakes win number four and first for this season in the Listed Ascot Green Lough Neagh over 1300m at Eagle Farm.
After jumped strongly from his outside gate, rider Boris Thornton resisted the urge to push on and let his mount drift back to last before coming with a strong circling run and had the race in his keeping a good way from home, defeating Prince Of Boom (Spirit Of Boom) by 2.2 lengths with Strait Acer (Headwater) third.
Cifrado had won the Spirit Of Boom Plate (G2) and Qld Sires Prodice (G2) as a juvenile before a few indifferent runs as a three year-old saw him gelded before winning the Vo Rogue Plate (G3) last December.
His Lough Neagh victory came after two runner-up efforts at his two runs from a spell this time and he will now press on to the Magic Millions meeting at the Gold Coast in January.
“Three big runs on heavy tracks is a great effort,” said Thornton.
“Rex has always had a great opinion of him as have I. I still don’t think we’ve seen the best of him yet.”
The win takes his record to five wins, six seconds, and a third from 21 starts with earnings of $1,355,025.
Bred by Black Soil Bloodstock, Cifrado was a $320,000 purchase for Cliff Little from the Eureka Stud draft at the MM Gold Coast Yearling Sale.
Cifrado is one of two stakes winners for Excites mare Madame Fly, a half-sister to Group III winner Chapter And Verse and has also left Listed winner Miami Fleiss but sadly died in 2021.
Encryption stands at Eureka Stud at a fee of $11,000 and is currently safely ensconced in the top 10 stallions of his third-season cohort by earnings and winners, a position he also maintained as a first and second season sire.