01 August 2023 , 15:11
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A barely-known Brazilian trainer, based in Ireland, had an unforgettable moment at Glorious Goodwood by registering his first winner in Britain at one of its biggest race meetings.
Diego Dias trains just a handful of horses on the Curragh and has only held a licence for four months but introduced himself to a wider audience with a 20-1 victory with two-year-old Mansa Musa.
His team is made up of sales rejects, young horses he has prepared for the Breeze-up auctions which have not attracted a suitable bid. Mansa Musa was one of Dias’s ‘failed breezers’ but the 41-year-old trainer from Minas Geras, Brazil was confident he could win races.
He was due to be ridden by Vincent Ho, the top Hong Kong jockey, who had been booked to partner Mansa Musa until he fractured vertebrae in a fall in Japan.
Under his replacement Rossa Ryan, the colt got up in the final strides of the 6f maiden to defeat the odds-on Array by a short head.
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Dias said: “I am from Brazil. My father was a trainer and I’ve been involved in horses all my life. I rode back home in Rio, and rode in Ireland as well.
“For the past few years I’ve been doing breeze-ups. I took out the licence this year and that’s my second winner. I like all my horses and the horses I don’t sell at the breeze-ups have to be given another chance by running them.”
He went on: “We always liked this horse at home. We always liked him even when he went to breeze-up sales and nobody bought him.
“He had a very hard blow after his first run. He was not as fit as I thought. I thought we would have a great chance to win.
“The training is going better than I imagined. I came here confident he was going to put up a good show.”