Spankem again showed he is nearly impossible to catch in the lead when he won the New Zealand Messenger Championship at Alexandra Park last night.
Driver Natalie Rasmussen controlled the group 1 feature in front with Spankem and she made her rival drivers pay when the 4yr-old she trains in partnership with Mark Purdon scored.
Rasmussen blasted Spankem off the mobile arm and they got a comfortable time in front for the first lap of the 2700m feature.
After that, the tough front-runner was always going to be hard to hold out and the race played similarly to Spankem's win in last week's Taylor Mile.
"He got a nice soft lead again and that first lap was pretty kind," Rasmussen said in her post-race television interview.
"I was a bit conscious not to spark him up, because he can get a bit keen sometimes.
"But he was nice and relaxed and he had a beautiful trip in front and he was able to hold him off."
In a repeat of last week's Taylor Mile result, fellow talented All Stars 4yr-old Turn It Up chased his stablemate home and ran second.
Spankem made TAB bookmakers, who underestimated his race chances, pay with his New Zealand Messenger Championship.
The 4yr-old opened at $3.60 win odds in the days before the race and was heavily backed, before starting at $2.20 in fixed-odds markets.
The All Stars stable produced another front-running feature win last night when Enhance Your Calm claimed the group 1 Northern Trotting Derby.
However, the victory was not a simple case of the horse stepping straight to the front the way Spankem did.
Enhance Your Calm gave his backers a major scare when he galloped out of the gate and lost valuable ground before recovering to win.
The Purdon-Rasmussen trained treble of group 1 wins last night started with Sweet On Me winning the Sires Stakes Championship for 2yr-old fillies.
Canterbury trotter Sundees Sun capped a meteoric rise to the top of the open ranks by winning the Rowe Cup at Alexandra Park last night.
The Robert Dunn-trained trotter made it back-to-back group 1 wins when winning the 3200m feature for driver John Dunn.
Oamaru trotter Majestic Man ran third, behind veteran Speeding Spur.
