“It is hard to line up the form but he deserves his crack and I think he will race well,” says Pike.
But across the three transtasman meetings Pike is involved in, he says his best chance of a winner is Hat Trick (R7, No 5) at Pukekohe who lived up to his name by winning his third on end at Tauranga last start.
“He is a pretty good horse but a very big horse,” says Pike.
“He has had his soundness issues but now we have him right his three wins have shown us what he is capable of and I don’t think he is finished yet.“
He will be hard to beat on Saturday and if he goes as well as I expect, I would be keen to give him his chance in the Easter meeting (Ellerslie, April 20).
Hat Trick finds himself in a handy field but his ability to jump and run handy to the speed coupled with apprentice Lily Sutherland’s 1kg claim suggest he can keep winning. Pike rates his juvenile Wind Rush (R2, No 5) is a strong race tomorrow and says he wouldn’t be shocked if the brother to Adam I Am won.
“He still has plenty to learn but he has a heap of ability.”
He also has a far richer two-yearold prize to chase tomorrow with Archaic Smile a serious chance in a very deep $450,000 Manawatu Sires’s Produce at Trentham. She finished second to tomorrow’s favourite Velocious in the Sistema Stakes at Ellerslie last start and Pike says he won’t be bothered if some rain falls at Trentham.
“That won’t worry her but we all know this is a very, very good field,” he says. “Still, she beat plenty of these last start so she should go another big race and at this level it might come down to luck in the running.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the three fillies [Velocious, Archaic Smile and Captured By Love] ran the trifecta again.”
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.
