Jockey James Winks celebrated the recent arrival of son Cooper with a win in the opening heat of the inaugural Subzero Challenge at Caulfield on Wednesday. Winks, whose wife Laura gave birth to Cooper last week, partnered the Tony Parker-trained Freshwater Storm to a dominant win in the Race-Tech Subzero Challenge (1400 m), the first heat of Victoria’s three-race series only open to grey horses.

A thrilled Parker said Freshwater Storm was beginning to furnish into the horse he had always promised to be and is hoping today’s two length victory can be a sign of things to come.

“He is just improving all the time this horse,” Parker said. “He’s taken plenty of time but we’ve been patient and we’re going to get our rewards.”

Parker is now eyeing the final race in the series, which honours popular 1992 Melbourne Cup hero Subzero, at Flemington on Oaks day before turning his attention to some lucrative country features during next year’s Melbourne Festival of Racing.

“He’s going to go to the last heat now, not the middle one, and we’re just going to look after him because in the autumn I’ve got some good plans for him,” Parker said. “If you keep him fresh he’s easy to train and he’s pretty effective at any distance. I’ll look at some country cups over 2000 metres because he’s already won over the trip.
Winks positioned Freshwater Storm ($11) three deep with cover in the run before striding to the lead at the top of the straight and spacing his rivals, eventually recording a two-and-three-quarter length win over Anthony Freedmans’ Specter ($3.60 favourite) . . .

. . . Parker now leads the race for the $10,000 Subzero Challenge trainers’ bonus with Freshwater Storm receiving maximum points from the race in which points were allocated on a 10-7-4-2-1- basis.

The series heads to Moonee Valley on Sportingbet Manikato Stakes night before the final event at Flemington on Crown Oaks day.

The series namesake Subzero, who is as popular as ever through his work with Racing Victoria’s Schools Program, was on track to lead the field out of the mounting yard.

The full result from the Race-Tech Subzero Challenge is  available here .

Tony’s black and white strategy comes up trumps in greys’ race

by: Ryan Reynolds Horse Racing

(Geelong Advertiser, 16 October 2014)

WALLINGTON trainer Tony Parker pulled off the perfect plan to score victory with Freshwater Storm at Caulfield yesterday.

Freshwater Storm defied a betting drift to cruise to a length win in the $80,000 Race-Tech Subzero Challenge (1400 metres) with Craig Williams on-board.

Parker said his talented six-year-old galloper was set for the race following a six-length eighth at Caulfield almost a month ago.

“Craig Williams said after the first race that we should put him in the greys race (Subzero Challenge) and he’d win it,” Parker said.

“So we set him for the race. We knew he didn’t have to improve much (because they ran good time).

“He finished behind Trust In A Gust who just keeps on winning.

“We were only worried about him carrying 60kg because he is not a big horse.”

Williams rode Freshwater Storm beautifully, pushing wide off the rails on the home bend.

“He had to ride him positive, probably closer than what we would normally,” Parker said.

“The favourite (Beauty’s Beast) was going to lead and we didn’t want to be too far away.

“The 1400m is still too short, Craig said he just won the race on ability.”

The win opens up a plethora of opportunities for Freshwater Storm during the spring.

Parker said he was likely to keep Freshwater Storm away from hard tracks during the carnival.

“We will weigh up all our options now and sort of watch the weather. We don’t want to run on Good 3 too much,” he said.

“There are other races we can aim for like the Kyneton Cup or the Sale Cup, those sort of races.

“Some of those races have better prizemoney than in town.”