Five-year-old gelding Anderson Bridge made an emphatic NZ debut, after a pretty lacklustre time across the Tasman in Australia.
The son of Savabeel was with Chris Waller’s Sydney stable in his time in Aus, having 19 starts for the solitary victory – a Hawkesbury maiden on November 9, 2023.
A brief crack at Group company in his 3YO autumn campaign saw him finish 5th in the G2 Tulloch Stakes, but he couldn’t convert that sort of form to a victory in Benchmark / Class 1 grade thereafter.
Across his 19 starts in Aus, Anderson Bridge was ridden by 14 jockeys – so you can’t accuse Waller of not mixing it up with him trying to get a better result, but it wasn’t to be.
But a mere five months after his last start at Canterbury in July, Anderson Bridge crossed the ditch with aplomb – going bang for trainers Kevin and Stephen Gray, winning by 5L in a Benchmark 65 over 1400m.
He had the services of one of NZ’s leading riders, Bruno Queiroz, on his back, and it was a welcome confidence booster for the horse as he embarks on his new career in NZ.
We’ll see where it takes him from here, but it certainly is a narrative-changer for Anderson Bridge after plenty of defeats before career win No.2.
You certainly have to be a smidge wary of a horse that didn’t even snare a Class 1/maiden at Gosford at his penultimate Aus start, but a scene change might have just been the tonic for him.
In Australia, Anderson Bridge munched a fair bit of punters’ money – with 10 defeats at single-figures, and throw-in that he won when drifting from $7 to $13 in the official SPs.
Story from Punters.com