But trainers like Ken Kelso with Legarto and to a lesser extent Katrina and Simon Alexander with La Crique will be making phone calls this morning to confirm whether their wonderful mares get on the transporter south.
“If we are going to start she [Legarto] will need to leave on Friday morning,” says Kelso, who trains in partnership with wife Bev.
“It sounds like the track will improve and the wind will help, so I’d say at this stage she is going ,but if it remained heavy we have the option of going to Te Rapa next week instead.”
The good news for the Kelsos and Legarto fans is the most optimistic predictions for Trentham tomorrow are a Soft 5 that could even reach a Good 4 if the expected 23 degrees eventuates during the day.
he better the track, the happier Kelso will be because Legarto trialled like a mare ready for action last week after the addition of a hood.
“She has never worn a hood in a race, but she worked very well in her exhibition gallop wearing it and looked keen in her trial with it on,” Kelso said.
“We spoke to Vinnie [Colgan, jockey] about it and he thinks it is really helping, so we are happy with her going into the weekend, we just want that better track.”
The Alexanders are just as happy with La Crique’s condition, but Simon admits there is the nagging doubt about how race fit she can be, having not started since September 27.
“Katrina thinks she has her pretty close to the mark and we are really happy with her overall,” Alexander said.
“Like a few others, we would want to see the track improve, but ideally, we want to start and that would give us more options for the summer, like tackling the Zabeel Classic on Boxing Day, which would he hard to do if we don’t start this weekend.”
There is genuine depth to the Mufhasa field and you could make the case that if every horse were at its peak, then Legarto might be the most talented.
But Waitak has looked a more confident and complete version of himself this season and his last-start Livamol win was one of the best weight-for-age performances in New Zealand in recent years.
His Group 1 wins in the last two legs of the spring Triple Crown were on a Heavy 9 at Te Rapa and a Good 4 at Ellerslie, so his versatility makes him the horse to beat, especially because Trentham’s wide-open spaces and long straight suit his sit-and-pounce racing style.
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.
