For­mer cham­pi­on train­er Glenn Mendez was very hap­py with the per­for­mance of his 2019 "Horse Of The Year", Juice Man, on Sat­ur­day in the fea­ture Hand­i­cap for hors­es rat­ed 80 and over go­ing over a dis­tance of 1,750 me­tres at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma.

The event which was orig­i­nal­ly sched­uled for the turf track was changed to the main track be­cause of the heavy rain­fall over the week­end.

Mendez said, "He won how we ex­pect­ed him to win. He was gal­lop­ing ex­treme­ly well in prepa­ra­tion for this race and he oblig­ed in style. At present, Juice Man is a fit and healthy horse and we hope he will re­main in this man­ner. Re­al­ly, he had an un­in­ter­rupt­ed prepa­ra­tion and he gal­loped su­perbly in prepa­ra­tion for this event."

Pun­ters made the Mendez-trained Juice Man the 3-5 favourite to take the event and he nev­er gave his backer any rea­son to wor­ry, oblig­ing by four and a quar­ter lengths from Gen­er­al JN and Thisones­for­ron, re­spec­tive­ly.

When asked about the ride of Ricky Jadoo, Mendez said, "It was the typ­i­cal Ricky Jadoo ride. He knows the horse and rides him with con­fi­dence. He broke him smart­ly and set the frac­tion and when he asked him to go win his race, he quick­ened up in great style."

On the race be­ing move to the main track, Mendez said, "We re­al­ly want­ed to get in a race on the turf track be­fore the In­de­pen­dence Cup which will be his next start on Au­gust 31 - In­de­pen­dence Day. He has worked on the sur­face and we ex­pect­ed to run well but that was not to be.

"The oth­er hors­es who he will come up against like Gen­er­al JN and Apoc­a­lypse have nev­er raced on the turf so we will all have to wait on In­de­pen­dence Day to have our first start on the turf track. I am of the be­lief that he will run well on the grass as he pedi­gree clear­ly points in that di­rec­tion. But we are hope­ful that the tran­si­tion will be a pos­i­tive one."

On Sat­ur­day last, when the hors­es ap­proached the cor­ner, Juice Man was con­front­ed by Gen­er­al JN who loomed up to chal­lenge him but the man­ner in which he put away "the Gen­er­al' who is a very good horse, was some­thing worth see­ing. He sim­ply breezed away from Gen­er­al JN with Jadoo be­ing able to ease him down close home. He could take some beat­ing in the top races of the year.