Tonight he faces another early disadvantage with Wag Star, who he trains, starting off a 10m handicap in a capacity field in the $100,000 Hydroflow Country Cups Championship.
Wag Star has been battling handicaps and poor draws all autumn, often booming home late but Ferguson says there is one key difference between his tactics tonight and Marketplace last Friday.
“I think his best chance of running out a hard 3200m is being driven quiet in the first half of the race,” says Ferguson.
“I wouldn’t want to be taking off on him over the long trip and usually in this race they run hard, so I think it will suit him being driven that way.
“But in a full field that still means he will need luck and maybe the right cart into the race.”
Alongside fellow 10m marker Pinseeker, Wag Star has been a promising newcomer to the open-class pool and looks like he belongs, albeit Pinseeker has properly dived into that pool and made a bigger splash.
Either could win tonight but while their 10m handicaps don’t sound daunting over 3200m in the full field, it could mean settling 15 lengths from the leaders, so if either can make a quick beginning it may enormously enhance their chances.
They are joined back in the 10m mark by North Island Country Cups winner The Surfer, who has raced well at Addington before, and Betterthancash.
All those off that 10m handicap are aided by the front line containing plenty of horses possibly not in their best form after the long, magnificent but tiring Country Cups series.
That may allow for a rarity, a major 3200m winner coming from off the marker pegs, with the $5 Box Seat Boost for Pinseeker (available in TAB futures) looking very fair money for a pacer who finished fifth in The Race by Betcha.
While Fugitive is red-hot to win tonight’s other Group 1, the Avon City Ford Welcome Stakes, the Group 3 Heather Williams Memorial for the trotting mares has a lot more moving parts.
Favourite Eurostyle has been superb this autumn and could be an open-class factor in the second half of the season as our elite trotting ranks start to reshape.
Her peak performance would probably win tonight but she does meet some high-class rivals in Hidden Talent, Nellie Doyle, Julie Jaccka and the returning Empire City.
The latter spent the back end of last season chasing home Australian champion Keayang Zahara and comes in tonight without a trial.
“I don’t think that will bother her because she is very well and ready to go,” says trainer Phil Williamson.
“But she is up against some good mares who are race-fit. She can win but it won’t be easy.”
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.
