Racing: Fully Fledged Sydney bid ends in injury

Cambridge trainer Murray Baker will have to find a new nickname for one of his owners Peter Walker.

Baker won Saturday's $200,000 Ford Manawatu Sires Stakes for Walker and fellow owners with The Heckler and named Walker 'Lucky Pete' and 'Podium Pete'.

Both of those are now gone.

Walker was spelling promising 2-year-old Charcoali at his Clevedon property after a handful of exciting runs from Anne Herbert's stable.

The youngster was killed after taking fright at night and impaling himself on a fence post when almost certainly attempting to jump it.

And late yesterday Walker received news that his top-class 3-year-old Fully Fledged broke down in a suspensory after working in Sydney.

Peter Walker is at home recovering from a knee replacement operation last Wednesday.

"I was starting to come right - now I reckon I'm going backwards," he said on hearing the Fully Fledged news.

"It could be the end of him, but I don't know how bad it is.

"He was sore after a gallop and they said they found the problem in the suspensory pretty quickly - I don't know, but it's not good."

Fully Fledged was the group one winner of the Ford Diamond Stakes at Ellerslie as a juvenile last year and went a fabulous race after running greenly in a very strong field at Rosehill last start. Had Australian jockey Corey Brown been able to keep him straight in the closing stages he would have finished closer than fourth.

At least Murray Baker has had two good pieces of news this week.

The first is that the A$700,000 ($864,000) Sydney Cup favourite Moatize has been scratched from the race, the second is that rain has begun falling.

Sydney received 24ml rain overnight on Tuesday and rain continued yesterday.

Baker has Auckland Cup runner-up Mr Tipsy in Saturday's A$2.25 million BMW at Rosehill, where he will have to carry weight-for-age.

Mr Tipsy drops to 51kg for the Sydney Cup and looks a great chance at his current $10 odds.

Master O'Reilly is the current A$6 favourite in Australian betting markets ahead of Zavite (A$7) and Newport and Zagreb (A$8).

Form cross references sometimes work well. Sometimes.

You look for one to assess the chances of the Lee Freedman-trained Dane Julia in Saturday's $200,000 NZ Bloodstock Breeders Stakes at Te Aroha.

Here's just one.

Melbourne pro punters believe Dane Julia's form would not be up to the performance Auckland mare Culminate put in to finish second in Sydney two weeks ago.

Culminate would almost certainly start favourite if she was in the Te Aroha race, but she would likely find it difficult to hold out brilliant up-and-coming filly Shanzero who would have had a 2.5kg advantage.

So can Dane Julia keep Shanzero at bay under those same conditions?

Balancing that slightly in favour of the Australian mare is that two starts back she was heavily backed and beaten only half a length in the group three A$125,000 Mannerism Stakes at Caulfield.

Dane Julia got to the front that day, looked the winner close to home and was bombed late by smart types Symphony Miss and Flying Ruby.

She is South African-bred from a Danehill mare and won her first five in her home country including the group one South African Fillies Classic as the $1.80 favourite and the group two SA Guineas.

She has not won in 11 Australian starts since joining Freedman, but has recorded a second and three thirds and will be ridden by Michael Walker.

The Sydney rain is not so welcome for trainer Stephen McKee as he prepares Mufhasa for his Australian debut in Saturday's A$400,000 George Ryder Stakes.

Culminate surprised when she managed a rain-affected track at Rosehill, but Mufhasa is a speed-orientated horse and less likely to cope if the footing was slow or heavy.