No Nay Never’s Lake Forest Flies High In Golden Eagle

Lake Forest (3c No Nay Never – Lady Aquitaine, by El Prado) secured an incredible prize for connections when raiding the $10 million Golden Eagle at Rosehill on Saturday.

Last year’s Group 2 Gimcrack winner finished second in the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup on his three-year-old debut and stepped up to seven and a half furlongs for the first time at Rosehill. Cieren Fallon held William Haggas’s charge up at the back of the 20-strong field and asked for an effort with two and a half furlongs left to race. Switched right a furlong later, he ran on well to lead close home. The winning margin was half a length, as French raider Lazzat was forced to settle for runners-up honours, with fellow Group 1 winner Tom Kitten taking third.

“That was great, absolutely amazing,” the winning trainer later reflected. “To beat Lazzat was a pretty impressive effort, I thought, because he's a Maurice de Gheest winner.

“We've never sent a three-year-old [to Australia] before, so for me that was an experiment, to see how he could cope with it. But we hope that he can come back and be a nice horse next year in England.”

The son of No Nay Never was bred by Sahara Group Holdings.