The history books tell us that Hernando Cortez was a Spaniard who conquered Mexico and wiped out the Aztecs. His equine namesake emulated that achievement by lifting the laurels at the Sydney Derby and wiping out a few reputations in the process. \u00a0 As expected Lex Luthor<\/STRONG> set out to make every post a winning one and soon had a number of the runners in trouble. Skills In Magic<\/STRONG> was unable to go with the early pace and was 18 lengths adrift at halfway, he could never land a blow from that position. Former rivals Good To Be King<\/STRONG> and Creepshow<\/STRONG> were able to sit a little closer and were within striking distance if good enough. Of the pair Good To Be King<\/STRONG> showed the more stamina passing Creepshow<\/STRONG> in the final quarter but was unable to make up enough ground quickly enough. It was Cortez<\/STRONG>, a horse that possesses enough speed to win a Grade 1 at a mile, who was able to go with those punishing early fractions set by Lex Luthor<\/STRONG>. When you felt his stamina would give way with 2 furlongs to run, he instead set about tackling the leader. Cortez<\/STRONG> passed Lex<\/STRONG> with a furlong to run and powered away for a 2.5 length victory. \u00a0 The finishing time was just a touch slower than Sunnybank Memorial\u2019s<\/STRONG> 11 length romp and almost a second slower than Horseshoe Bay\u2019s<\/STRONG> impressive win last year. He still has work to do to be compared to those two legends. \u00a0 The win has catapulted Cortez<\/STRONG> to the top of the rankings for 3yo turf marathoners and increased his prize-money haul to almost 1.5 million. No doubt we will be seeing him in the top 12 furlong races this year and owner slipknot22<\/EM> would even have the option of dropping him down in trip if necessary. Cortez<\/STRONG>, the perfect blend of speed and stamina! Equinics mile victor shows extreme versatility to capture Sydney Derby<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/btb.ehorseracing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}