New Zealand Cup Week: Crocetti favoured heading into Riccarton Guineas

Crocetti may have won the most important lead-up race to the 2000 Guineas last start but it was what he did the start before that convinced jockey Warren Kennedy he can win the classic at Riccarton tomorrow.

Crocetti goes into the $600,000 group 1 unbeaten in five starts and with premiership leader Kennedy in sublime form so the pair opened $1.45 favourites for a Guineas that may lack two of the other best 3-year-olds in the country.

With the aid of barrier 1 Crocetti seems to have the race at his mercy with perhaps the greatest concern being he is from a family more renowned for its sprinting exploits than 1600m form.

Kennedy, the razor-sharp South African jockey who had made such a mammoth impression in just over a year of riding here, doesn’t shrug off the slight concerns over the extra distance.

“He is so brilliant I think long-term he may be a top sprinter at 1200m and up to 1400m,” he told the Herald.

“But I think often those sort of horses, the really good 3-year-olds, can get away with extending to 1600m against their own age group.

“He might actually be more versatile than that and he could even end up being a weight-for-age miler because he is still improving all the time.”

Crocetti led and controlled the speed to down the previously unbeaten Lupo Solitario in the Sarten Memorial at Te Rapa last start, a race that felt like a real Guineas trial.

That was a case of Crocetti leading, easing the tempo and blasting his last 600m in 34 seconds but Kennedy acknowledges there could be more pressure tomorrow as his rivals won’t want to turn the race into a dash up the Riccarton straight.

“There could be pressure but that is why we rode him like we did two starts ago when we elected to take a trail on him over 1200m, to get him ready for both scenarios,” explains Kennedy.

“I’d love to lead on Saturday and get him into a rhythm but if somebody is really determined to take him on he showed two starts ago he can trail, take an inside gap and really explode.

“So we have options and the horse to pull them off.”

There is enough depth among the opposition to suggest Crocetti is going to need to be on top of his game to claim the Guineas for trainers Danny Walker and Arron Tata, with Burn To Shine, Trobriand, Talisker, Latern Way and even filly Bozo good enough to produce a group 1 performance.

And the somewhat forgotten horse of the race is Solidify, who has a Guineas-class motor yet can often lose concentration but he might be one of the better 3-year-olds in the country when he works it all out.

Kennedy has a great chance of a feature-race double with Nest Egg in the Metropolitan, the $100,000 lead-up to next Saturday’s New Zealand Cup.

Nest Egg has been luckless plenty of times in the last year but took that out of the equation last start with a surging mid-race run on his way to a win that suggested he is now stronger and ready for his two huge races in a week.

“He is in great form and this track should suit him, as will only having 53kgs so I think he will be hard to beat,” says Kennedy.

New Zealand Cup Week

Saturday, November 11: 2000 Guineas Day, Riccarton

Tuesday, November 14: New Zealand Trotting Cup Day, Addington

Wednesday, November 15: Couplands Mile Day, Riccarton

Thursday, November 16: NZ Greyhound Cup night, Addington

Friday, November 17: NZ Free-For-All Day, Addington

Saturday, November 18: NZ Galloping Cup Day, Riccarton

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.