Racing: Crushing Crocetti to skip Bay Guineas

Crocetti. Photo / Race Images

Crocetti won’t be asked to go down the Guineas path twice this spring even after a crushing win in the $100,000 Northland Breeders’ Stakes at Ruakākā yesterday.

The exciting new arrival in the three-year-old ranks remained unbeaten at his third start when he bolted clear of rivals including a Group 2 winner in Trobriand.

He worked across the field to lead and was doing pacework for much of the race, and when jockey Warren Kennedy let him go at the top of the straight he raced to a four-and-a-half length win.

Local filly Dancing Dream was able to hold second after racing outside the leader, with Trobriand below his best in third, being left flat-footed in the trail and only warming up late.

The win saw Crocetti shorten into $4 favouritism for the 2000 Guineas at Riccarton in November, rarified air for trainers Danny Walker and Arron Tata, who only train 18 horses and also won with their other starter yesterday in Reverberations.

While Crocetti’s jump-and-run style would seem to make him the perfect horse for the $175,000 Hawke’s Bay Guineas on September 30, Walker says that won’t be the target even though the Hastings race has proved a successfully pathway to Riccarton for four of the last five 2000 Guineas winners.

“He definitely won’t be going to Hawke’s Bay,” Walker told the Herald.

“We don’t want to travel him too much and ask too much of him so his main lead-up to Riccarton will be the Sarten Memorial.”

That $150,000 race is at Te Rapa on October 21, three weeks out from the 2000 Guineas, but with Te Rapa being nine weeks away Crocetti may have another start before the Sarten.

Both Tauranga and Matamata have set weight and penalty races for three-year-olds which would fit in nicely to that programme.

Owner and breeder Daniel Nahkle says recent stake increases and a wave of enthusiasm sweeping New Zealand racing means Crocetti wears the “not for sale” sign.

“I love what is going on since the Entain deal was signed and it makes me far less likely to consider any offers for this horse,” says Nahkle.

That is music to Walker’s ears as he and Tata have long been sellers, like many smaller stables, to make the business viable.

“Everything we race is for sale so to have a guy like Daniel with a horse this good he doesn’t want to sell in our stable is very exciting.”

Earlier in the Ruakākā programme White Noise made the most of a favourable handicap and 4kg claim to easily win the open sprint for 23-year-old jockey Donovan Cooper, who handled the Easter Handicap winner perfectly.