Classic Success
Wragg enjoyed Classic success in his very first season as a trainer when Teenoso won the Epsom Derby under Lester Piggott in 1983. However, the closest Wragg would come to replicating Teenoso's win would be some 23 years later when the unconsidered 66/1 chance Dragon Dancer came within a short head of causing one of the biggest upsets in the race's history in a four-way go to the line, narrowly losing out to Sir Percy. What was so ironic about that result, was the fact Wragg actually trained the temperamental dam of the winner and both he and his father also trained several of the extended family, the most notable member being Teenoso. His 2001 contender, Asian Heights, well fancied after his last-to-first win in the Predominate Stakes at Goodwood, was cruelly robbed of his chance of running in the Classic after splitting a pastern with just over a week to go before the big race. He recovered to win at Group 3/Listed level at a later date, but further injuries blighted him during later years and his career somewhat fizzled out.
Away from the Derby, Wragg failed to win another classic in the UK, though his talented filly Marling landed the 1992 Irish 1000 Guineas at The Curragh. Red Glow was made favourite for the 1988 Epsom Derby, but the colt was a notoriously tricky hold up ride and found plenty of trouble in running before finishing well to take fourth behind Kahyasi. He never scaled the heights his impressive win in the Dante Stakes the previous month had promised.
Read more about this topic: Geoff Wragg
Famous quotes containing the words classic and/or success:
“The detective novel is the art-for-art’s-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.”
—V.S. (Victor Sawdon)
“Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentiment in mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)