Mount Olympus reaches peak
Mount Olympus scaled one of racing’s peaks taking out a maiden win on the Ballarat synthetic on Tuesday, July 18.
Heavily backed from $2.15 into $1.75 favourite, the two-year-old gave his supporters no cause for concern dashing away from his rivals in the home straight to take out the Hertz Ballarat Maiden (1200m) by seven lengths.
Trained by Tony & Calvin McEvoy, Mount Olympus flew out of gate one to lead and jockey Jamie Mott rated him perfectly to thrash the opposition.
Ruminate ($9.50) chased fruitlessly to take second, three-quarters of a length clear of Isle Of Mikkinos ($16).
For trainer Tony McEvoy, the win revived some pleasant memories of a grey galloper of the same name prepared by David Hayes about 30 years ago at Lindsay Park, then at Angaston in South Australia.
“My wife Jo used to ride him in work, Mount Olympus, back in the day,” McEvoy said.
“He was a beautiful grey horse and ran a slashing race in a Melbourne Cup.”
That Mount Olympus won the 1990 Dalgety (now the Archer Stakes) on VRC Derby Day when David Hayes trained an incredible six winners.
Jo McEvoy is one of the owners of this version of Mount Olympus along with some family and friends.
“He really was dominant,” McEvoy said.
“He had the race experience on the others here, but he really stepped up to the plate today and really impressed me.
“We will just take small steps with him, we are in July, so I don’t think we will get ahead of ourselves.
“I do think we have a nice young horse that will keep getting better.”
The winner, by Invader, cost $150,000 at the Gold Coast yearling sales.
Winning jockey Jamie Mott was suitably impressed by the ease of victory of Mount Olympus.
“It was a really impressive win,” Mott said.
“On form it looked like it could have been his race quite easily.
“I liked the way he handled himself, began great and travelled nice.
“He was just waiting for me to give him a click up coming into the straight.
“Once he balanced and I gave him a click he showed a good turn of foot very quickly.
“I could have won by three or four more lengths but I didn’t want to but I didn’t want to push him that hard.
“He has done a great job.”