Dan Mielicki must have felt a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu when he asked, \u201cHas the world ended?\u201d as the horses crossed the line in the Smoken Up Sprint at Melton on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
Along with the crowd, Mielicki was stunned as Victoria\u2019s most popular pacer, the 10-year-old Bulletproof Boy, first up from a spell, grabbed champion pacer Leap To Fame on the line to record his third win in the race.<\/p>\n
Mielicki first uttered those famous words 25 years ago when the Richard Hancock-trained Kyema Kid stormed past Courage Under Fire, who was previously unbeaten in 25 starts, in a heat of the 2000 Inter Dominion series at Moonee Valley.<\/p>\n
The race appeared to be going to script as Leap To Fame, the prohibitive $1.06 favourite, straightened with a clear lead from Miki Pins and Bulletproof Boy, who pulled off the pegs to stake an unlikely successful assault on the horse considered by many to be the best in the world. And then it happened.<\/p>\n
The official margin to the $71 chance Bulletproof Boy was a half head, who recorded a mile rate of 1:51.1 for the 1720 metres. It was an astounded James Herbertson who brought the Scott Ewen-trained pacer back after the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it happened,\u201d Herbertson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have said before that he is the fastest horse I\u2019ve driven for point-to-point speed and he really showed it tonight,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Herbertson said he started to contemplate a monumental upset halfway down the home straight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was only about 100 metres out and I thought that we were making pretty good ground on him and Grant (Dixon) wasn\u2019t really getting away from us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s 10 or 11 years old now and I don\u2019t think you\u2019d find a horse out there that would love racing more than he does. He\u2019s a competitive beast and he\u2019s killed Goliath tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ewen was understandably delighted after the race. \u201cHe\u2019s a freak. He\u2019s going on 11 but he knows the difference between races and trials and always has,\u201d Ewen said.
\u201cI thought if he could run a hole tonight I\u2019d be rapt but I didn\u2019t expect to beat Leap To Fame,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bulletproof Boy, though, may not get the opportunity to repeat the dose in the Victoria Cup according to Ewen, who didn\u2019t nominate for the race.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was first up tonight and it would have been another gruelling run. I was contemplating going to South Australia for the Cup because I\u2019m an Adelaide man, but now I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the horse dubbed the \u2018Mighty Mouse\u2019 went from seemingly invincible to \u2018gettable,\u2019 so too now has Leap To Fame in next week\u2019s Group 1 Victoria Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Mielicki must have felt a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu when he asked, \u201cHas the world ended?\u201d as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-194286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}