On Tuesday Autridge said a kind barrier would be nice.
"I wouldn't mind a 9 or 10. I want to be out of that," he said and got that the following day in the field of 16.
That places Gingernuts in the outside half where the gelding will negate the chances of anyone knocking him off his stride as they surge in to negotiate the first corner of the left-hand track.
"He's going to be back parked out one or two and coming back into it," Autridge says, after the horse finished fifth in the group one 1400m Tarzino Trophy in the first leg of the spring carnival here after some interference at the top straight a fortnight ago.
Then there's the elements to factor in.
"A little bit of rain," he says. "I'd like at least not better than a [dead] 4, anyway."
At the last check, the weather gods were playing into the co-trainers' hands with a promise of early drizzle right up to early this morning in a week punctuated by showers although the penetrometer had drifted to dead 5 late yesterday.
Autridge says those conditions will slow down the other horses a little bit.
"Gingernuts isn't a 1600m horse," he says of the 4-year-old chestnut sired by Iffraaj (2001, Great Britain) out of Double Elle (2001, NZ). "To keep her going over 1600m we need her to be going a little slower so that's why we'd like a little bit of rain."
Have they got the right bloke slipping on the silks of tangerine and royal blue stars and striped sleeves on the stayer?
"We have the best jockey in New Zealand so we're all right," says Autridge of Boson who has clinched most of the major races on two-time group one winner Gingernuts.
"Opie Boson wins most of the races in New Zealand so we're halfway there."
The co-trainers have nominated Gingernuts for the final leg of the spring carnival here, the $250,000 Livamol Classic, on Saturday, October 7.
However, Autridge says they are keeping their options open.
"We're looking at that or he could be in Australia on the same day but we won't know until after the weekend."
If Gingernuts wins the plate today then he will most certainly be on a flight across the ditch.
"But he is being aimed at the Caulfield Cup so after [today] he'll have another run. It'll either be the Livamol Classic or the Turnbull Stakes," Autridge says of the Victoria Racing Club's A$500,000 ($540,000) group one thoroughbred race for horses 4 years old and older, run under set weights with penalties conditions over 2000m.
"The better he goes here the sooner he'll go but we're not sure we'll stay back."
The Turnbull Stakes is held at Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne.
It is one of the important races of the spring carnival there and is considered a vital precursor to the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and the largest thoroughbred meeting in the southern hemisphere, the Emirates Melbourne Cup.
Autridge agrees there is an element of risk with the lure of the prizemoney and prestige of winning on a bigger platform but that is the nature of the beast, as it were.
"We just have to work out that we are 110 per cent happy that we want to stay in New Zealand so we just want to make sure of that."
Asked to describe the gelding, Autridge says he is placid but, more importantly, he possessed the desired demeanour of a champion racehorse.
"He's got the right attitude. He tries to please you. He sort of says 'I'll do me best', you know."
Autridge says quite often horses packed a bad attitude so all a trainer can do is hope they will go well come raceday.
"This horse says, 'I'll do my best, boss'."
Autridge also reckons sometimes horses can try to do their best but are just not good enough.
"We're just lucky this horse is good enough."
Gingernuts has played second fiddle, if not third, to the 2017 Horse of the Year Bonneval last season.
He was runner-up to Bonneval with Kawi, also racing today in the plate, third.
The Kiwi horse also was the runner-up 3-year-old champion stayer although Goodwood Stud, of Manawatu (breeder of Gingernuts, Nicoletta and Order Again), was voted breeder of the year.
Gingernuts won the 142nd edition of the group one New Zealand Derby in March this year, on the heels of defying the 26-1 odds in the group two Avondale Guineas in February before showing his prowess by claiming the group one Rosehill Guineas in his Australian debut in March.
He was sold as a weanling for $5000 but fetched $42,500 when put through the ring again in the 2015 Ready to Run Sale of 2-year-olds where Te Akau Racing bought him.
Gingernuts, who has since earned more than $1 million for the Te Akau syndicate renowned for wearing orange caps, began his career winning two of his first five races on rural tracks such as Te Teko.
