The burgeoning rivalry between Sacred Satono and Babylon Berlin will kick up a gear when the pair meet at Pukekohe on New Year’s Day.
Sacred Satono got the better of his older rival at the South Auckland venue in the Listed Counties Bowl (1100m) in November and trainers Grant Cooksley and Bruce Wallace are hoping for a repeat performance in the Gr.1 Sistema Railway (1200m) on Monday.
Cooksley and Wallace liked him the moment they saw him at Karaka as a yearling and they are pleased the $34,000 purchase out of Rich Hill Stud’s 2021 New Zealand Bloodstock Book 2 draft is fulfilling his promise.
“I trained his half-sister and she went alright,” Cooksley told TAB NZ. “I went and had a look at him at the sales and liked what I had seen. His first couple of gallops we knew we had something then.
“You wouldn’t get a better horse to do anything with. He is just so relaxed and nothing seems to worry him. He just does his work and walks off the track like a pony, but when he switches on he is a different horse.