KEY POINTS:
Trainer Mick Price is resisting the temptation to run former Matamata galloper Alamosa in the Cox Plate, despite the entire posting his fourth group one win in the Toorak Handicap at Caulfield on Saturday.
Price said Alamosa appealed as a handicapper and not a weight-for-age horse and he queried Toorak form from a Cox Plate perspective.
"It is tempting to run in the Cox Plate but I don't reckon Toorak Handicap form goes into the Cox Plate properly," Price said.
History backs Price's view with Tobin Bronze the only horse to win both races in the same season in 1967.
"I would like to stick with handicaps with him but I will speak to the syndicate that owns him. He is still alive in the Cox Plate but I think his weight-for-age race form versus handicap form says a bit."
Michael Eskander's Betstar slashed Alamosa's Cox Plate quote from $34 to $21.
Alamosa was given to Price to train for the Cox Plate but he switched to a handicap campaign with the 4-year-old after he was beaten under two lengths at each of his first three runs for the stable at weight-for-age.
The 1600m Toorak was his first run since he finished fourth in both the Liston and Memsie Stakes and sixth in the Dato Tan Chin Nam Stakes (1600m) on September 13.
Alamosa raced as a 2- and 3-year-old in New Zealand.
Price freshened Alamosa for the Toorak, took the blinkers off him and made a jockey change.
"We had to make a few changes," said Price explaining the month between runs for the son of O'Reilly.
"It was no reflection on Steven King's riding on him for three runs but we were going from weight-for-age to handicaps, put Craig Newitt on and blinkers off and the time between runs has worked beautifully," he said.
Newitt parked Alamosa three wide with the backmarkers in the early stages but he was confident he had the race won before the home turn.
"I thought he was going to win 600 metres out," Newitt said. "He travelled up and I couldn't hold him any slower. I waited a while and when I asked him he exploded."
Alamosa charged down the centre of the track and brought up his 10th win in 21 starts, striding away 1 3/4 lengths clear of Rockwood with Pillar Of Hercules a length away third.
Price said a group of leading breeders in New Zealand had banded together in a syndicate to race Alamosa and stand him at stud.
"Those horses need an Australian group one to take back to New Zealand and he has done the job fantastically," Price said.
Price said the Emirates Stakes (1600m) at Flemington on November 8 was an appealing mission.
"He is such a clean-winded and clean-skinned horse I don't think he would need another run before then," Price said.
- AAP
