Horse racing: Robbie Patterson eyes Desert Gold Stakes win with Leica Lucy

Leica Lucy winning at New Plymouth in November. Photo / Peter Rubery, Race Images Palmerston North

Robbie Patterson may not have quite as much equine firepower at tomorrow’s Wellington Cup meeting as when he dominated it last year but he says he can still grab another major win.

The Central Districts trainer won both the Thorndon Mile and Wellington Cup when they were both run at the same meeting last year but has only longshot Nom De Plume in the $400,000 Cup tomorrow.

But he says it should be the emerging talent of Leica Lucy in the $200,000 New Zealand Bloodstock Desert Gold Stakes who heads his black-type team tomorrow.

Leica Lucy was an impressive winner of the Eulogy Stakes on this track and over this distance last start, and with the two races almost mirror images, Patterson says there is no reason Leica Lucy can’t win again.

“In fact, she is a better chance,” Patterson told the Herald.

“I actually gave her a week off after the Eulogy and she thrived and is even stronger now.

“The best thing about her, apart from the fact she can run, is she loves eating. I have never had a young horse eat like her.

“I worked her Tuesday morning and she was straight back into the feed bin as soon as we let her near it.

“That is a huge help with these young horses when they eat well during their campaigns so they can keep their energy up and recover from races.”

Leica Lucy isn’t one of the hype fillies of a very good 3-year-old crop but she could develop into a staying star in the second half of the season as the emphasis changes to 1600-plus races right up to the 2400m of the New Zealand Oaks in March.

“She will love getting up in distance and the Oaks will be her aim but she is a great chance this week.”

Back to the Cup later in the day, Patterson says Nom De Plume showed the benefit of being ridden handy last start and that will be the plan again.

“She gets too far back too often and can’t sprint past them because she doesn’t have any speed but last time when she settled a little handier, she stuck on well.

“So that will be the plan again and I’ll be honest, I don’t think it is the strongest Wellington Cup so maybe she has a blowout chance.”

It is also a Wellington Cup with a few of the better-known names not racing at their absolute peak and has the feeling of a race where the stayer feeling the best on the day will get its chance at a big payday.

Almost as big a payday is the second running of the $350,000 Remutaka Classic, the innovation race for mid-grade stayers, and it has drawn a superb punting field.

It is rare in a field so big you can make some sort of case for almost any horse winning and one of the more interesting runners is Moonlight Magic, who finished second in Warmonger’s Queensland Derby last winter and resumed two starts ago with a fifth behind Snazzytavi.

In a normal race of this grade that would be standout form, but it wouldn’t surprise to see half of tomorrow’s field go on to be at least decent open handicappers.

Patterson says punters who backed Last Souvenir at Te Rapa last start should forgive him and be on again in tomorrow’s opening race.

“He got down on his bumpers [back of fetlock joint] that day and just got annoyed but we have changed his shoeing and sorted that out.

“We think he is our next good horse and with the filly is our equal best chance of the day.”

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.