Velocious won the Listed Counties Stakes on Saturday. Photo / Race Images
The secret racetrack visit punters didn’t see from TAB Karaka Million favourite Velocious may help her win our richest juvenile race every bit as much as her stunning Pukekohe victory on Saturday.
The Cambridge filly made it two brilliant wins in as many starts when she blew past Karaka Million 2-year-old favourites Poetic Champion and Savaglee in the Counties Challenge Stakes, seeing her rushed into $3 favourite for the Millions signature race at Ellerslie on January 27.
While the sectionals may have suggested the leaders left themselves vulnerable, it is still hard to make a case that, all things being equal, Velocious isn’t the perfect filly for the Karaka Million.
She has the breeding, racetrack performance and manners, as well as being trained by Stephen Marsh, who proved he knows how to win a Karaka Million when he trained another filly Ruud Awakening to win it in 2013, also for Velocious’s syndicators Go Racing.
About the only thing Velocious doesn’t have going for her is she isn’t trained by Te Akau, who seem to win every Karaka Million 2-year-old race, but surely their run of seven straight wins can’t go on forever.
The one possible unknown for Velocious and almost every other starter at the Millions meeting is her lack of experience at Ellerslie, which has been shut since March last year for the installation of a StrathAyr track.
But surprisingly, Velocious has that base covered, too.
Even though she only debuted at Te Rapa 16 days ago, Marsh took Velocious to Ellerslie last Monday as one of the horses allowed to canter around the track as part of its return to racing protocols.
“It is not something I’d usually do, race her one week, then head to Ellerslie on a Monday for a look, then race again five days later, all in the space of two weeks,” says Marsh.
“That is a lot of travelling and working for a young filly but she has never turned a hair.
“She is that professional, you wouldn’t even know she’s had a race this morning [yesterday] and she handled Ellerslie beautifully.
“I knew we wouldn’t get many chances to take her there before
the Millions, so we took the unusual step of taking her, especially with the track being new and that huge new irrigation pond at the 600m mark.
“She didn’t give it a second look, she is unbelievable.”
Marsh says Velociuous will now have an easy week and return to Pukekohe for the Eclipse Stakes on New Year’s Day before heading to the Karaka Millions.
Punters may have copped a financial bleeding nose at Pukekohe on Saturday but the defeated left the track feeling down but not out.
While a few favourites scraped home on a competitive Counties Cup day, all four black type races saw the favourites beaten, hardly the ideal way to be heading into the mammoth summer of racing.
But the trainers of most were finding solace in sectional times or handicaps as they eye the smorgasbord of stakes races about to unfold in northern racing.
Both Tony Pike (trainer Poetic Champion) and Pam Gerard (Savaglee) were impressed by Velocious in the Challenge Stakes but also thought the early sectionals undid their charges so they aren’t conceding the Karaka Million yet.
Also beaten but still on track for her major summer target is Babylon Berlin, who was run over by Sacred Satono in the Counties Bowl but will meet him enormously better off in the weights come January 1 after giving away 6kg on Saturday.
Also not well off at the weights was Counties Cup favourite Aquacade (fourth) but she will revert to weight-for-age next start, with Dionysus looking the big improver out of the Cup as he targets the Cups again this summer.
And while Fraglioni was beaten by a genuine Group 1 mare in Campionessa for comeback jockey Matt Cameron in the Dunstan Feeds Breeders Stakes, Fraglioni’s trainer Josh Shaw will go home stoked she finally has black type, and at Group2 level, to boost her future broodmare career.
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.