Line Seeker wins Griffin Trophy

29 December 2014

Line Seeker led throughout and held on desperately in the closing stages to hold off Sky Hero to win the Griffin Trophy by a narrow margin at Sha Tin racecourse yesterday.

Strathmore pressed the winner from the start and finished third with Dashing Fellow fourth in this HK$2 million contest.

The win was the second in a row for Line Seeker, sent off as top favourite in a field of 13. The son of O’Reilly, ridden by Zac Purton, covered the 1400m distance in 1m 21.70s, with the final 400m in 22.95s.

“He really got tired the last bit but he ran a 22.06s in the middle and he did a bit,” said winning trainer Paul O’Sullivan, who teamed up with Purton to win the G1 LONGINES Hong Kong Sprint with Aerovelocity a fortnight ago.

O’Sullivan said he may drop Line Seeker back to 1200m for his next start, but he was more than glowing in his assessment of the O’Reilly gelding’s ability.

“You won’t be seeing him for another two, three runs this season. He could come back and be a nice sprinter later on,” the New Zealand handler said. “He is a very skinny, long horse but he is very athletic. He is never going to be big and strong like me.”

The Corner with Garry Chittick

I keep on proposing my retirement from the burden of a weekly Corner. I make the excuse it is hard to be credible, hard to let the two of you know about anything in our sport that hasn’t been covered before.

27 October 2025

WS-bred On The Lash scores at Sha Tin

Twenty-four hours following the final WS Cox Plate meeting run on the Moonee Valley track of old before it shuts for two years to make way for a new precinct, the race’s 2004 winner, Savabeel, continued his roll of runners, and this time it was via five-year-old On The Lash (ex Candelabra) at Sha Tin.