It was a win that saw his owners – including Nichols – also collect a $20,000 VOBIS Gold Open Horse Owners Bonus.
Nichols said the bonus made up for the horse’s shocker at Caulfield on January 2, when he nearly fell out of the gate and finished 11th in a 12-horse field.
“With the VOBIS money today I reckon he did better than if he had won at Caulfield,” he said.
“And he owes me - he bit me when I was saddling him up and I’ve got a big bruise on my arm. But he can keep doing that if it works on every start.”
He did do better, picking up a total of $47,500 for the win, compared with $41,250 had he won at Caulfield.
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Even better, those smart enough to back the horse also hit the jackpot – Red Octane paid $17.30 for the fourth win of his 22-start career.
Apprentice jockey Alexandra Bryan really earned her fee when she virtually kept her fading horse going long enough to win by a nose.
That gap was all the more remarkable after Bryan and fellow apprentice Emily Brown (riding Bobby Rocks) swept to the front soon after the jump and then fired up their hi-octane engines to get away by as much as 20 lengths along the back straight.
If the other jockeys planned to wait for them to run out of gas, they were incredibly disappointed.
It wasn’t until the two bolters hit the home straight, still many lengths clear, that it finally dawned on the far more experienced hoops in pursuit they had made a mess of the whole affair.
The favourite, Barbie’s Fox, was doing some great work at the end but it was too little, too late and it finished 1.6 lengths adrift.
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It was a stunning success for the audacious junior jockeys, but it paid off big time, with Bryan taking Red Octane’s career earnings into the six-figure bracket with the $27,500 winner’s purse lifting him to $113,030.
After the race, Nichols said the tempo of the race had been a lot stronger than he expected, although he knew his horse would be out somewhere near the front early.
“I just didn’t expect him to be way in front of the others like that,” he added.
“The other horse (Bobby Rocks) showed plenty of speed to lead him, but when he’s on-song he can lead 1100 m races from the get-go, just like he did in the Benalla Cup, where he led quick horses for much of the way and didn’t get beaten by that far.”
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Nichols also conceded the 2 kg claim that came with having Bryan aboard meant his horse was running “with the lightest weight of his lifetime”.
“It’s just pleasing this win will keep a few people from knocking at the front door and I will be able to afford to eat for a couple of weeks now,” Nichols said.
“When Red Octane is right, he’s always going to run a nice race and I believe he’ll get out to a mile because he’s always able to relax when he gets on-pace.
“And you have to think he’d be fairly comfortable in front in a mile race too. He’d get a pretty soft run, so we might try that because today was the toughest 1400 m he’s ever had to run.”
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Bryan, who had expected to be leading early, said Red Octane had put in a pretty tough race.
She said he was a one-pace horse, so it worked better if people had to catch him, not the other way around.
“I knew we were clipping along a bit so I was just aiming for him to keep ticking over,” Bryan said.
“And he did,” she added.
● Fellow Benalla trainer Russell Osborne has taken his moniker Last Race Russ across border lines, with Mountain Ibis saluting in the final race of the day at Albury last week.
The four-year-old gelding laid claim to the $21,560 1175 m Conway Printing Benchmark 58 Handicap at the Tuesday, January 12 meeting, earning him his second career win in 10 starts and the first under Osborne.
The win also saw jockey Brendan Ward complete the double, bookmarking the event with a win in the first and last races of the day.
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