Few Good Men can provide Chris Alford with his fifth Maryborough Cup success this Monday
Fond memories will come flooding back when Chris Alford heads to Maryborough for Monday’s $25,000 Central Goldfields Shire Maryborough Gold Cup.
The 2690-metre standing start event marks the 20th anniversary of the champion reinsman’s first win in the race, which came via Bronski Beat.
Alford has gone on to win it three more times, with Windsor Royal (1995), Ari Vance (1996) and Tromos (2005), to equal the great Vin Knight as the most successful reinsman in Maryborough Cup history.
The 41-year-old will be out to claim the record outright when he partners Few Good Men in Monday’s race, to be run at 5.07pm, and thinks that would be the ideal way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his initial win.
“That’s a long time ago now, way back, and I think I’d only been driving for about four years then,” Alford recalled.
“I have had a bit of luck at Maryborough and it (a fifth Cup win) would be a nice way to celebrate the milestone.”
And he’s going there with a live chance. Few Good Men is a standing start specialist who last season won the St Arnaud Cup before running a quality field off its legs in the gruelling The Pure Steel.
In total the Peter Tonkin-trained son of Panorama has won 17 of 70 starts, with a further 23 placings, for almost $130,000 in stakes.
Alford said the six-year-old is edging closer to peak fitness after two runs back from a six-month spell, the most recent a close-up third placing to Sterlish from a 20m handicap last Sunday at Kilmore.
“He ran a good race at Kilmore the other day, but just got found wanting in the last 50 metres,” Alford said.
“He loomed up as the winner but then just ran out of puff. Peter (Tonkin) said that he’d missed a little bit of work, though, and thought he’d be a lot better this week.”
Few Good Men is one of five runners to start off a competitive 10-metre row of backmarkers. He will begin from the inside that row with Deanna Troy, Ti Vogliobene, Wideford Hill and Karlsruhe to start outside him.
Among those off the front are Our Madagascar (one), Veranjee (four), Trojan Luck (five) and Very Chic (six), while Thats Mister Ali (eight) has the second row all to himself.
Alford didn’t seem too concerned with drawing the inside of the 10-metre line.
“He come off 20 (metres) the other day and settled three-back the pegs, so he gets away pretty well,” he said. “That’s not too bad a draw and he should be able to put himself into the race.”
The Maryborough Gold Cup, the third leg of the Choice Hotels Country Cups Carnival, is the feature event on Monday’s nine-race card that commences at 1.25pm.
But the Central Goldfields Shire Maryborough Gold Cup Carnival starts on Sunday, when a seven-race twilight card will be run from 5.07pm.
