KEY POINTS:
In a career stacked with big-race highlights, Ross Elliot was scratching to come up with one yesterday to surpass Blimey O'Reilly's Waikato Guineas upset at Te Rapa.
The Cambridge trainer always knew he had something special in the O'Reilly gelding, now a serious Mercedes Derby hope on March
3.
But when a last-start Gisborne winner makes a winning middle-distance debut against highly-touted 3-year-olds, even the normally confident Elliot admits it felt like a David v Goliath victory at Te Rapa on Saturday.
"This has to be my biggest thrill as a trainer, no doubt about that," said the former top rider, who also saddled Zilzie to win a group three event last October.
"You know you've got a talented horse going in to the race, but they still have to take the next step up.
"They were big raps on a few others so if he'd run third, fourth or fifth I would have been ecstatic."
While the Derby shift from Boxing Day to March has been praised by trainers before, Elliot is now self-elected president of the fan club.
Without the two-month buffer, Elliot seriously doubts if he could have had Blimey O'Reilly ready for the $700,000 group one.
"He's always shown us he's super-talented; he's just needed a bit of racing."
As for the step up to 2400m in the Derby, after the way Blimey O'Reilly found another gear for rider Gavin McKeon in the Guineas' stretch, Elliot isn't fazed.
"He's such a big long-striding horse, and each step he's taken, he's carried on."
McKeon is also confident Blimey O'Reilly will cope with 2400m against his own age group.
On Saturday he proved he has the ability to switch off in a race, and then quicken when he needs to.
"Like Seachange does, he took a great big gulp of air at the 800m, and I thought,'I'm on a live chance here'," said McKeon.
Elliot isn't 100 per cent sure yet just where Blimey O'Reilly, who was slashed in to a $18 fixed odds Derby hope with the TAB yesterday, will top off his group-one preparation.
But the way he ran about when fourth in a maiden race at Ellerslie in December has Elliot leaning toward a return there to fix the problem, most likely in the Championship Stakes on February 17.
Blimey O'Reilly was a tad wayward again on Saturday, drifting in across third-placed Mettre En Jeu near the line.
Rider David Walker lodged an unsuccessful protest claiming the interference cost him a chance of finishing closer.
"My horse drifted in about three-quarters of a horse width, but so did the other horse at the same time," said McKeon.
"Had he [Mettre En Jeu] already been on the fence when we did drift in I would have been in trouble."
Elliot has been here before with a Derby hopeful: he saddled Coup D'Etat to run in St Reims 2002 Boxing Day thriller for two of Blimey O'Reilly's owners, ex-pat Kiwi racecaller, Macau-based Bruce Sherwin, and Macau trainer Jo Lau.
But Elliot says this time in he's giving Sherwin and Lau - Macau journalist Laurence Wadey rounds out the syndicate - far fewer headaches.
After running third in the Derby Prelude of his year, Coup D'Etat got stuck on the Derby Trial ballot, forcing Elliot to trek instead to Otaki with the gelding for an unscheduled, albeit winning Derby tune-up over 1600m.
Trapped wide early in the Derby, Coup D'Etat faded in the straight to beat just three runners.
Elliot, however, rates Blimey O'Reilly "far superior". He just hopes now he can hang on to him for a little longer. The Blimey O'Reilly camp, who Elliot says have "always been into selling their horses", have had a "decent old price" on him since he stepped out at the trials.
