Horse racing: Savaglee set to win 2000 Guineas at Riccarton, says trainer Pam Gerard

Savaglee winning the Group 2 James and Annie Sarten Memorial (1400m) at Te Aroha. Photo / Kenton Wright, Race Images

Winning the 2000 Guineas can change a colt’s life.

But trainer Pam Gerard says being a colt might be why Savaglee wins tomorrow’s classic at Riccarton.

The Matamata 3-year-old is $1.50 to win the Group 1 race that rivals the big sprints like the Railway and Telegraph as the races most likely to give a New Zealand-trained horse a shot at a commercial stallion career.

That path is still not easily travelled but since Darci Brahma won the Guineas nearly 20 years ago and went on to be a proper stallion, a decent proportion of the classic winners have had at least handy stud careers.

Jimmy Choux (2010), Rock N Pop (2011), the late Atlante (2013), Xtravagant (2016) and Embellish (2017) have all got starts as stallions while Sacred Falls (2012) and Turn Me Loose (2014) have done way better than that.

The 2021 Guineas winner Noverre was retired soon after he won the Guineas and now stands at Waikato Stud, so tomorrow’s 1600m is one of the few races here that provides a legitimate pathway to a future dating career.

While Savaglee’s owners The Oaks Stud are serious players who won’t be getting too far ahead of themselves, this Guineas looks his to lose – as many of the other early favourites are absent, which doesn’t surprise Gerard.

“It has been a really hard spring for a lot of these horses and their trainers,” she told the Herald.

“I was watching a few of them parade before the Sarten [Te Aroha, last week] and they were looking the travelling we have all done because of having two races being cancelled was getting to them.

“That is where I think being a colt has really helped our horse. The good colts can bounce out of hard races or the travel and he has done that.”

Being a colt can come with its hassles though, especially if they start to get territorial and want to throw their weight around in a new environment, like the one Savaglee found himself in after flying south to Riccarton on Wednesday.

But while Savaglee likes girls, he also likes travelling.

“He can be a bit colty at home, squealing out and carrying on but he is actually better away from home,” explains Gerard.

“He has done a lot of travelling and raced really well when he is away.

“He seems to get more curious when he is away and takes everything in but he doesn’t get as colty for some reason.”

With Riccarton set to provide a good surface and only seven rivals on the huge track, it is hard to make any case for how the peak version of Savaglee will be beaten tomorrow, especially with jockey Sam Spratt in near career-best form.

From barrier four, he should be able to settle handy and if he races up to any of his spring form, he should win.

Love Poem is the only filly in the race so gets a weight advantage but it is hard to see her running past Savaglee in a race that may lack tempo, while stablemate Kiwi Skyhawk has a little bit of something about him and finds the line well but was clearly outpointed by He’s Lucid at Riccarton last start, although whether that was just because of a wet track will become more apparent tomorrow.

The overs in the race belong to So Naive, who was beaten into fourth in the Sarten but got down in the inside of the track where it looked the stickiest.

The horses who finished second and third in the Sarten aren’t in the Guineas tomorrow so if it and the Hawkes Bay Guineas are the form races of the spring, then So Naive has finished closer to Savaglee than any of his rivals tomorrow.

NEW ZEALAND CUP WEEK

Tomorrow: 2000 Guineas Day at Riccarton.

Tuesday 12: New Zealand Trotting Cup Day, Addington.

Wednesday 13: TAB Mile Day, Riccarton.

Thursday 14: New Zealand Greyhound Cup night, Addington.

Friday 15: Show Day twilight, Addington

Saturday 16: 1000 Guineas and New Zealand Cup Day, Riccarton.

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.