Racing: Late decision on Fountain Abbey

Early this morning Bruce Wallace will make one of the toughest training calls of his career.

Does he run emerging Takanini staying star Fountain Abbey in the Nathans Memorial Handicap at Ellerslie today? Or should he scratch and push on to the New Zealand Herald Auckland Cup on Saturday without another race?

Late yesterday Wallace was weighing the pros and cons of both decisions without any clear indication of which way he'd swing.

The clincher, said Wallace, would be when he pulled Fountain Abbey out of his box today.

"The horse will tell me if he needs a race or not when I look at him," said Wallace, who has adopted a low-key cup build-up so far to keep the pressure off.

"I really don't know whether to run him in the Nathans. He's only in there because after he won at Te Rapa Allan [Peard] felt he needed one more.

"I guess it comes down to whether you subscribe to the Bart Cummings theory of running a certain amount of metres to win a cup, or the Vincent O'Brien method of preparing them off the racetrack."

The Nathans has been a good race for Wallace in the past.

He tuned up Able Master, fresh from running in the Melbourne Cup, in the same event before he won the 2000 Auckland Cup.

"Able Master is the only other horse I've had in the cup and I thought he was a big chance, but I'm even more confident with Fountain Abbey," said Wallace.

If Fountain Abbey does start today, Wallace is sure of one thing - he doesn't want the horse having a tough run.

"If he can win with one leg in the air I'd be rapt," he said.

"I don't think he needs a hard run to clean him up for the cup."

On his recent form, cup rider Michael Coleman shouldn't need to stretch Fountain Abbey to win today and gain automatic entry into Saturday's race.

After a season or so of indifferent form, Fountain Abbey is finally living up to the reputation Wallace bestowed on him unraced.

"I told everyone he was my Derby horse before he'd even raced," said Wallace.

"But he shied in his second start and dropped Allan just short of the post and that was the end of his Derby preparation.

"One bit of bad luck and you are out."

Ironically, unlucky Queen Elizabeth runner-up Garrard, the horse Wallace now rates as Fountain Abbey's biggest threat next Saturday, is the cup mount of Peard, Wallace's foreman.

But Wallace has always encouraged Peard to take outside mounts and said there wasn't a lot in his decision to choose Garrard over Fountain Abbey. "It was the toss of a coin for him really. They're similar sorts of horses."

With 52.5kg in the cup, Fountain Abbey should just scrape in to the field, regardless of the Nathans result. But the pressure is on Nathans rivals Spit N Polish and Straight Eight today. Both must win to escape the cup ballot.

Yesterday Fountain Abbey was paying $12 on the TAB's fixed odds market for the Auckland Cup, with Garrard and Zabeat $6 favourites.