“I will sleep on it tonight after having a chat with Chris [Ryder, co-owner] and see what he thinks.
“If he was only going to Queensland for the Inter Dominion, that trial wouldn’t be good enough to send him.
“But he has an invite to the Rising Sun on July 5 and it might not be anywhere as strong.
“So we will decide tomorrow [Wednesday].”
It is extremely rare for a Purdon-trained runner to be as erratic as Chase A Dream has proven this season.
On his best nights, he has won the Waikato Flying Mile and finished second to Leap To Fame in the $1 million Race by Betcha but in stark contrast his other five starts this season have produced a seventh, eighth, two ninth placings and a 10th.
“We have had him checked out for everything physical, we have done chiropractic work on him and we really can’t find anything else wrong.
“So it is a very tricky one.”
Purdon says Rubira will definitely still head to Brisbane via Sydney on Sunday to compete in the best 3-year-old races at the winter carnival while stablemate Oscar Bonavena will be on the same flight to target the A$500,000 ($544,000) Inter Dominion Trotting Final on July 19.
Purdon was pleased with Akuta’s first public appearance since December 2023 in Tuesday’s trial but the muscular son of Bettors Delight will now head to the paddock as part of a in-and-out rehabilitation from a tendon issue.
“The vets seem to think that is the best way to handle those sort of issues these says, bring them up to near full speed then ease off them and do it again,” explains Purdon.
“He seems good at this stage so he can have another break now and hopefully come back for the second half of the season.”
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald‘s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
