Racing: Early exit for top colt Xtravagant

Xtravagant will be going directly to Melbourne next season. Picture / Trish Dunell

Top colt Xtravagant will be heading directly to Australia next season.

"The plan is to take him to Melbourne in early August and he will then race there through the spring," Te Akau Racing principal David Ellis said yesterday.

"We will probably trial him there on the better tracks and look to kick him off at Caulfield on [August] the 27th, most likely in the Heath Stakes over 1100 metres.

"We will then be looking to run him in races like the Toorak Handicap and hopefully he will finish up in the Cox Plate."

The two-time group one winner of the New Zealand 2000 Guineas and against the older horses in the NRM Sprint, both times by extended margins, Xtravagant hasn't raced since his clear-cut victory in the group three Cambridge Breeders' Stakes in April.

"After a month of pre-training at Te Akau Stud he is back in the stable and he has settled in really well - he looks fantastic," Ellis said.

Also reunited with trainers Stephen Autridge and Jamie Richards is the unbeaten two-year-old Heroic Valour.

He made a successful debut at Trentham in January and a month later he won the Listed Reid & Harrison Slipper before adding the group one Diamond Stakes to his CV.

"He looks great and is being prepared for a trial at Te Teko in early August and then he will be aimed at races like the Hawke's Bay Guineas and the New Zealand 2000 Guineas," Ellis said.

"He will have a spell after that and we will be looking to take him to Sydney in the autumn."

- NZ Racing Desk