Trainer Roger James will be happy even if the best horse racing at Matamata on Saturday can't run a place.
Then again, after what happened to Concert Hall last time she went to the races, James might be happy if she even makes it into the starting gates.
The Group 1 winner resumes in the $35,000 Lisa Chittick Plate after a terrifying incident before her last planned start at New Plymouth when she got loose going into the gates, bolted, crashed over a fence, left the track and galloped through a school playground and was caught a kilometre away.
"It was very scary but remarkably she has come out of it really well," says James, who trains with Robert Wellwood.
"She actually never drew blood and she seems perfectly fine. We have been really happy with her work and we are using this race as a trial for whether we go to Sydney next start or the Bonecrusher (March 13) at Ellerslie."