Toimy Son lights up Goodwood’s Golden Mile

Toimy Son produced a powerful finish to land the Coral Golden Mile for trainer David Menuisier.

The five-year-old Twilight Son gelding was in the midfield for much of the valuable handicap before three-time champion jockey Oisin Murphy made his move inside the final quarter of a mile.

As the pace quickened, Toimy Son (12-1) made headway on the outside to pass many of his rivals, including early frontrunner Benacre.

Holloway Bay put up a fight at the furlong marker, but he was no match for Toimy Son who stretched his advantage to two lengths in an impressive display, with the Charlie Johnston-trained Dutch Decoy pipping Karl Burke’s charge into second by half a length.

“I bought him at the Arc sale 18 months ago, I don’t know if I had him wrong, but he wasn’t doing anything last year. We decided to geld him to have an all-weather campaign, he decided to have a couple of colic operations and he nearly died,” said Menuisier.

“We had to give him time and this season he was coming back to some sort of form, I kept him over seven (furlongs) because he was always a bit keen. By racing he settled naturally so I thought it’s time to go back to a mile, we’ll save him for the Golden Mile and if he gets in he should be competitive.

“When I saw the draw I kind of lost all hope! He was 21 of 21, I thought it was going to be really difficult. I spoke to Oisin and he thought the horse had a massive chance so we tried to go a bit more forward than usual – the rest is history really.”

Murphy said: “David is a local trainer and will be over the moon.

“It’s really hard to win these competitive handicaps and he had a terrible draw, but showed a good turn of foot. Kyle Strydom has done a lot of work with him – thanks to him and all the team at David’s for getting the horse here in great shape.

“I revved him up at the start a little because he can be slowly away. I tried to get inside his head and actually it worked as he broke better. I couldn’t use up too much petrol and – I don’t want to complicate this – but I was able to get in one-off (the rail), travel, and he picked up well.”