Racing: Purdon confident star will shine

When New Zealand's most successful horse trainer says you can forget Four Starzzz Flash's last-start failure you listen.

So that confidence from Barry Purdon is good enough to make the classy 3-year-old pacer the best bet at Alexandra Park tonight.

Four Starzzz Flash was an expensive failure in the Waikato Guineas on January 8, his first start since a stunning win in the Elsu Classic at Alexandra Park three weeks earlier.

While at first disappointed by the Cambridge run, Purdon is now putting a line through it and suggests punters do the same in the Wai Eyre Farm Mobile Pace.

"He got back and when he went to move a horse came out in front of him," said the Clevedon horseman.

"Then he went back in and he isn't really the sort of horse who can sprint from the back like that, especially around Cambridge.

"I'd just forget all about it because he has worked well since and is ready to go a big one this week."

Four Starzzz Flash has been on a steep learning curve since joining Purdon and training partner Scott Phelan last month and one of the benefits of that experience could be demonstrated from a good barrier tonight.

"He has started to develop gate speed and from that barrier I think he will be able to get out well enough to stay handy."

Canterbury reinsman Colin De Filippi comes north to take the reins in a race Four Starzzz Flash should win if he is to remain one of the favourites for the Woodlands Northern Derby on March 12.

Purdon and Phelan will gear up two of the leading chances in race three for the junior drivers and Purdon believes the draw suits Kotare Ash more than Amboseli, to be driven by the in-form Zac Butcher.

"If they were drawn alongside each other maybe I'd go for Amboseli but they are both good mares and Kotare Ash could get the better run."

Tonight's $75,000 Pick6 provides punters with the unique challenge of two juvenile pacing races, a rarity on any New Zealand race programme.

The first for the males gives Dan's Gamble a chance to make up for some luckless efforts so far but he meets promising types in Mighty Flying Thomas, Casanova Cullen and King's Ransom.

The fillies' heat of the Young Guns series is the next race and with little exposed form punters will need to go wide, including I Have A Dream, Lollipop Dreams, Better Abs, Bettor Move It and, possibly, even Tiger Su.