“She had an off spring last season, too, and we all saw what she did after that,” says Wellwood.
“She had some things go wrong then in the spring and we totally forgive that last run at Ellerslie because they went ridiculously slow [1:25 for 1400m] and she had 60kg and they just outsprinted her.
“That race was to get her fitter for this race and we have seen nothing to suggest she isn’t as good as she was this weekend last year.
“The way she is eating, working, how she looks around the stables, everything is good so we are going in confident.”
While Orchestral may be looking more like a 2000m horse than one perfectly suited to tomorrow’s 1600m, she is also clearly the best-performed horse, not only in her race but at the entire meeting.
She loves the new Ellerslie and the four-year-old field is not intimidatingly strong.
Still, there will be punters who remember another glamour girl favourite, Legarto, getting beaten in this race last year before embarking on a 2000m campaign who will be jumpy about taking the short odds for Orchestral.
The James/Wellwood team will do a very unlike James/Wellwood thing when they give Dealt With his shot at the $1.5m Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old after only two unbeaten starts, the last of those just five days ago.
“We know he is a talented horse and should have won by three or four lengths if he ran straight on Sunday,” says Wellwood.
“It is a big ask but we have a good horse in form and it is a $1.5m race missing some of the best three-year-olds.
“Maybe he will find a couple of them too experienced but we think he will go very well.”
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.
