Dealt With was beaten but lost no admirers when he ran third in the Karaka Millions Three-Year-Old days after getting a slot, while Evaporate was in need of the run and luckless when third on February 8 in his first start since securing the Entain slot in the Kiwi.
Perfumist may not have endeared herself to punters who backed her into $1.75 in the last race at Randwick, but Baker says her second placing was massive.
“The horse inside her went too hard to hold her out and she was left a sitting duck late for the winner, who is a very good horse,” said Baker.
“I wasn’t disappointed at all. She hadn’t raced for four weeks, so I think it will really bring her on.
“She is definitely still going to Ellerslie, and I’ll give her a couple of good gallops and maybe even an exhibition gallop on the Saturday before she flies over on the Sunday [ahead of] the race.”
Perfumist is owned by syndication giants OTI Racing, who buy a lot of horses out of New Zealand, and is still rated the $5 equal favourite for the NZB Kiwi with Victorian galloper Evaporate, with Checkmate and Damask Rose on the next line at $6.
Nine of the 14 slots have now been filled for the NZB Kiwi, with the Barneswood Farms-Daniel Nakhle-Darren Brady slot horse to be announced at 8pm tonight live on Trackside.
Auckland Thoroughbred Racing will announce their slot horse on track at Ellerslie after the first race on Saturday, with three slots still to be filled after that.
A pair of slippers?
One of the few great Australian races to still elude New Zealand-trained horses remains at least a possibility for Return To Conquer.
The colt remained unbeaten after winning at Matamata on Saturday, heading home a Te Ākau-trained trifecta of Snitzel colts in the Fairview Slipper.
He is still in the entries of a much bigger Slipper, the A$5m Golden Slipper at Rosehill on March 22, but co-trainer Mark Walker isn’t thinking that far ahead.
“He will go to the Sistema at Ellerslie on March 8 next, and we can’t really start planning anything until after that,” says Walker.
“He would obviously have to win the Sistema [Group 1] to warrant going to the Slipper, and we’d check his ratings against the better Australian 2-year-olds to see how he stacks up.
“But we think he’s a very good colt, so he remains in the Slipper entries for now.”
Return To Conquer will clash with Karaka Millions-winning stablemate La Dorada in the Sistema on Champions Day.
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.
