Racing: An Elephant in the room

Elephant is building a good record of wins. Photo / Trish Dunell

First the bad news. Racing's newest cult horse in the making doesn't actually live up to his name.

Elephant, who remained unbeaten with a high-class win at Te Rapa on Saturday, is neither huge, intimidating or remotely elephant-like.

"I think people expect him to be but he isn't," laughs co-trainer Emma-Lee Browne.

"The truth is his breeder, Andrew Fowler, who still owns the majority of him, had always wanted to call a horse Elephant. So this horse got the name.

"He is quite big, about 16.1 hands but he is not some big huge horse like his name might suggest."

The good news is everything else about Elephant seems to be legit.

He had to be good to wear down the leaders in a swift 1:21.8 for the 1400m of his rating 74 on Saturday, especially with the leaders racing their last 600m in 33.69 seconds.

There were nervous moments at the top of the straight when the front pair had got away on him but Elephant surged clear in the last 50m, looking like a horse who could play his role in a race such as the Easter later in the season.

Before then he will head to Ellerslie on January 10 and still holds a nomination for the Thorndon Mile at Trentham on January 30, a race headlined by Melody Belle.

"We have paid up this far for him in the Thorndon so we will leave him in a bit longer and see how things develop," says Browne.

"But he would obviously need to be pretty impressive in his next start."

This not-so-gigantic Elephant seems to have picked up the best genes of his parents, having the scope from his Melbourne Cup winning sire Shocking and the speed of his open-class sprinter dam Ticklish, also the dam of top mare Melt.

His name and ability means Elephant now carries the burden of expectation but he looks likely to live up to it, with the pathway to the best open handicaps seemingly well within his range now. How potent he can be when he gets there is a question only time can answer.

Elephant, much to the delight of rival trainers, wasn't nominated for the Stella Artois Final at Ellerslie this Saturday, for which he would be favourite, but the Brownes' other Te Rapa winner — Gone West — will head to an Ellerslie final.

The huge and quirky grey made it three wins from his last four starts, all in the hands of Opie Bosson, and Saturday's win qualifies him for the $100,000 Dunstan Stayers Final on New Year's Day.

The way he shouldered his way into the clear before powering home over 2100m on Saturday suggests he will love the 2400m of that final, as you would expect from a son of former fine staying mare Pravda.

Gone West has not only inherited mum's staying ability but her stubbornness.

Pravda is best known for the race she didn't take part in, refusing to go down to the start of the 2000 Melbourne Cup and holding up the race for 10 minutes while jockey Lance O'Sullivan failed to get her to prelim.

Pravda was scratched while still standing on the track in front of the huge Flemington crowd and retired.

"This horse has got a bit of that in him too; sometimes he just doesn't want to go. But Opie gets on well with him and can get the best out of him," says Browne.