KARACHI, Dec 11: The bay gelding Love Land, having the services of jockey Dilshad once again in the saddle, won the main event in a start to finish bid at the Winter Gymkhana Race Meeting held on Wednesday at the Karachi Racecourse.

When the race began going over five furlongs, Love Land took the lead, chased all the way past the winning post by another bay gelding Never Band, whose owners decided to go with Never Band instead of their form entry Golden Voice and thus paid the penalty. Aziz Love grabbed the third spot with Ray Of Light completing the frame.

However, the day’s honours were shared by young jockey M. Nasir and seasoned trainer Taj Mohammad, who together had a brace of winners through Satellite Star in the fourth race and Sajan Black in the following event.

Nasir rode a splendid race on Sajan Black. When the race began his mount was left behind as the favourite Order Of The Day was command of the race approaching the bend, although Superb Star led the field into the home stretch, closely followed by Reincarnated

Using hands and heels, Nasir got his mount motivated and improving with every stride, caught up with the front runner 200 yards from the winning post to win by only a length from Superb Star, enabling Sajan Black register his second triumph in space of only three days.

With only a few race days remaining for the year to end, M. Nasir with 28 victories to date, is on course to be crowned Champion Jockey of 2002. His nearest rivals are exciting young riders Shahzad and Kashif Ali. Both are tied in the second spot with 18 wins apiece.

Taj, who was crowned champion trainer many years before, has 34 wins to date and his nearest rivals are last year’s champion Mansoor Alam (25), Iftikhar Ali (21) and Talib Hussain (16).

The first race on the afternoon’s programme was claimed by Syed Ali Gohar Shah’s Major Dandy, partnered by riding boy Naveed. Abr-e-Noor was second with Darbari Malang and Royal Springs, two other entries from Ali Gohar’s yard completing the frame.

As predicted in these columns, Royal Beauty, the best runner in the second race with S. Khan astride, clinched the five furlong sprint with effortless ease from Gharnata.

The grey horse Sachin, this time ridden by Shafi Mohammad, put up a much improved performance compared to last Sunday, surprized all and sundry by winning the third race beating more fancied runners Defence Academy and Millennium Magic, after Party Time, also fancied by the connections, stumbled and fell in the home straight.

Once again our racing column was in the forefront predicting four winners in six-race programme.

Our first winner came through Royal Beauty in the second event and was followed up by Satellite Star, Sajan Black and Love Land in the last three races. In the third event, Sachin fancied as our second best behind Reasonable, picked up the spoils.

Following are the results:

SADAF PLATE CLASS IX DIV G-V 5F