Grima in demand following feature win

4 July 2023

FRESH from the biggest win of his career, exciting young reinsman Seaton Grima finds himself in demand at Menangle today.

Grima won the Group 2 $100,000 Redcliffe Gold Cup with the Joe Conolly-owned and Jason Grimson-trained Loyalist at the start of their carnival.

With his hit-and-run trip to Queensland now well behind him, trainers have been quick to utilize the young man’s talent and Grima has four handy drives at Menangle today.

The best of those appears to be the Denis Maricic-trained The Fortunate Son in Race 8, with the nine-year-old gelding listed as a $5 favourite, despite being drawn out in gate seven.

The Fortunate Son scored an impressive three-metre win in a 1:52.3 mile rate when he started at double-figure odds just three weeks ago when Grima last drove him and a repeat of that run would see him close to the money.

Newcastle trainer Melanie Elder has also hopped on the Grima bandwagon and booked him to try and break a four-year drought of wins for her handy pacer Tygar in Race 7.

This will be Tygar’s third run since Elder took over as trainer of a pacer whose last win was at Menangle in 2019, although four of his 13 wins have been at this south-western Sydney circuit.

Grima will also drive Polka Dot Dance ($5) for Carl Eldridge in Race 3 as well as his own pacer, Jimmy Locke ($5) in Race 9.

“The Queensland win with Loyalist was so thrilling,” said Grima.

“Just knowing that what we set out to do we achieved and coming back to scale with family and friends there, well, I was over the moon.

“His owner Joe [Conolly] is always calm and collected.

“I’ve seen him get angry but never seen him so emotional. It showed how much the win meant to him and it was special for me to win on his horse.”

Grima said Loyalist was likely to stay in Queensland in Grimson’s care until the end of the carnival.

“He’s shown he can mix it with them. The Sunshine Sprint might not suit but if we can draw a barrier, you’d never say no,” he said.

“The Blacks A Fake would suit him as we can certainly start aiming higher with him.”

Grima said his parents were overseas and missed his biggest win.

“But Mum and Dad are happy when I win a $6000 race at Penrith so there were plenty of tears when they found out,” he said.