“She had lost her confidence.”
The good news for the Alexanders, La Crique fans and those considering backing the $3.20 favourite in Saturday’s $500,000 Westbury Classic at Ellerslie is La Crique appears to have found that confidence.
She went to the trials at Tauranga last Tuesday and smashed race rivals this Saturday in Our Alley Cat and Fashion Shoot but more importantly, ticked the two boxes Alexander had set for her stable star before the outing.
“I wanted to see her do two things,” she explains.
“I wanted her to get out of the gates well because when she wasn’t doing that in the spring that was a sign something was wrong.
“And I wanted her to travel straight, not put her head on the side like she did ever so slightly back in the spring, again a sign that something wasn’t right.”
La Crique did both, eyeballing Our Alley Cat in the 1100m catchweight and then sprinting clear while keeping her head gun-barrel straight.
It is not always wise to rate a horse’s race day chances on a trial win as horses go to trials with different agendas: some to get fitter, some to just tick over and some as a starting point with no pressure applied.
But the great thing about La Crique is you don’t need to question her ability as she has beaten Imperatriz (twice), Mustang Valley and Dragon Leap and pushed Levante and Legarto so we know she the peak version of her would be too talented for most of the mares she meets on Saturday.
So will something like that version turn up?
“I think she is almost there,” says Alexander.
“The good weather has helped and a few weeks ago we felt her turn the corner and that trial really brought her on.
“Her gallop this morning (Tuesday) was excellent.”
Alexander admits she would have loved to taken La Crique to one of the trackwork sessions at Ellerslie over the last month but that didn’t work out but she thinks the consistent new StrathAyr surface may give the now five-year-old mare confidence.
“They look like they really ping off it and that will suit her. It would be nice to get a good draw so she could get up against the rail.
“Maybe our one concern is the fact she hasn’t raced for over three months and plenty of the others have but we will see.
“But we are pretty excited just to have her back.”
Westbury Classic futures market
Saturday, Ellerslie at 5.29pm
$3.20: La Crique
$6: Faraglioni
$8: Luberon
$10: Express Yourself, Fashion Shoot, Malt Time, Our Alley Cat
$12: Belclare
$14: Dazzled
TAB Karaka Millions: All you need to know
What: New Zealand’s richest race meeting.
Where: Ellerslie.
When: Saturday, first of six races 4.19pm.
Highlights: $1.5million TAB Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old, $1million TAB KM Two-Year-Old, $1million Elsdon Park Aotearoa Classic.
What next: Barrier draws for the KM races revealed at 9pm tonight.
Can I go? Not unless you already have a ticket, the meeting is a sell out at 12,000 people.
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.
