CHARLES TOWN – Bar­ba­di­an jock­ey Re­shawn Latch­man main­tained his place in the top three of the jock­eys’ stand­ings at the Charles Town race­track in West Vir­ginia, with a dou­ble on Fri­day’s nine-race card.

He now has 32 wins for the sea­son and is third in the stand­ings be­hind ex­pe­ri­enced reins­man Ar­nal­do Bo­cachi­ca, the leader with 58, and sec­ond Mar­shall Mendez, on 39.

Latch­man got his first win aboard the 4-5 favourite Roy­al Pain by a head in the U.S. $34 900 sixth race over 1 700 me­tres on the dirt track.

He put Roy­al Pain in a stalk­ing po­si­tion, start­ed a chal­lenge leav­ing the sev­en-six­teenths pole, and moved to even terms mid­way on the far turn be­fore he got the four-year-old, chest­nut colt to grab the edge ap­proach­ing the head of the lane and dug in through the stretch to clock one minute, 48.29 sec­onds.

Latch­man fol­lowed up when he brought the cur­tain down with an­oth­er win astride the odds-on favourite Broad Imag­i­na­tion in the US $16 000 fi­nal race over 1 300 me­tres on the dirt.

He moved Broad Imag­i­na­tion to the in­side ear­ly and was firm­ly rat­ed to set the pace, but the three-year-old, bay colt came un­der pres­sure leav­ing the quar­ter pole and the horse dug in un­der steady en­cour­age­ment to keep the nod through lat­er strides to fin­ish in 1 minute, 23.68 sec­onds.

CMC