Well Written remained unbeaten with a fighting victory in the Auckland Guineas on Boxing Day. Photo / Kenton Wright
The hottest favourite of the TAB Karaka Millions is exactly where she needs to be.
That is trainer Stephen Marsh’s opinion of Well Written, after the unbeaten glamour girl galloped at Ellerslie on Tuesday morning in preparation for Saturday’s mammoth meeting.
Well Written is the $1.50 favourite for the $1.5 million Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old over 1600m and will go into the race with her 2kg fillies allowance over the boys.
She will carry a fortune as many punters’ multi anchor on Saturday and Marsh says those punters will be getting the best version of the New Zealand 1000 Guineas winner.
Galloping on the course proper on Tuesday morning Well Written quickened over her last 600m in 34.81s, one of the fastest times of a session that included many of the elite Australians who will be racing at Saturday’s twilight meeting.
“She was there for two reasons,” Marsh told the Herald.
“It has been nearly a month between runs so we wanted to get her mind back on the job and the trip away and different surroundings did that.
“To be honest, that was the main reason we took the opportunity to go up there, which we usually don’t do with horses the week of the races.
“So that part definitely helped as she was alert and knew it was something different so that switched her on mentally.
“And then fitness-wise, it was a nice gallop that will bring her on and we think she will be exactly where she needs to be for Saturday.”
There are two more pieces of the puzzle that Marsh wants to fit perfectly before Saturday, neither of which he can control.
The first one is Well Written’s draw, which will be decided at the Karaka sales grounds on Wednesday morning, where the draws for both the 2-year-old and 3-year-old races will be conducted.
A connection of each horse will be asked to choose a miniature trophy with the barrier draw underneath, which should create more drama than last year, when horses were drawn and their connections got to choose their own barriers, which resulted in the field filling up from barrier 1 outwards.
While trainers often say that want a neutral barrier around 4-8 to give a hot favourite options and not be forced into having to kick up from an inside barrier, Marsh isn’t mucking around with all that.
“Ideally I’d love a barrier between 1 and 5, she has the speed to use that,” he said.
The other part of the $1.5m puzzle Marsh has even less control over is the weather, which was wet in Auckland on Tuesday, with more rain forecast through until Thursday then improving.
The StrathAyr track at Ellerslie is now so successfully bedded in the surface is rarely worse than a Soft 5, or Soft 6 at worst if there is rain on the day.
But even with the superior surface, Marsh says the drier, the better for Well Written.
“Really good horses tend to like really good tracks,” he said.
“So I’d love the weather to dry up at the end of the week and for them to be racing on a Good 4 on Saturday because she will just ping off that.”
Marsh will have another stable 3-year-old filly in To Cap It All in the $250,000 Cambridge Stud Almanzor Trophy over 1200m on Saturday, and while she has only won one race, she was fifth last start against the older sprinters in the Group 1 Telegraph at Trentham.
“Damian Lane rides her and she has to be a good chance back against her own age group on what she did last start.”
Almost all the big names being aimed at Saturday’s meeting were still in play at final nominations time at noon on Tuesday, the most significant withdrawal being Grail Seeker from the Sistema Railway, as suggested yesterday.
There is also black-type racing at New Plymouth on Saturday, where Marsh has El Vencedor in the Taranaki Cup, and at Riccarton, on what shapes as a gigantic turnover day for the industry.
Wednesday: Barrier draws for Karaka Millions races (live from 10.30am on Trackside 1), fields for full meeting released.
Saturday: TAB Karaka Millions at Ellerslie, first race 4.27pm.
Jan 25-26: National Yearling Sale, Book 1 (567 horses catalogued)
Jan 27: National Yearling Sale, Book 2 (280 horses catalogued)
Jan 29: Karaka summer sale (160 horses catalogued)
Races info: www.ellerslie.co.nz
Sales info: www.nzb.co.nz
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.