KEY POINTS:
John Curtin knows there will be a moment of regret.
He will be sitting in his South Auckland lounge room late on March 28 watching the Interdominion Pacing Final live from the Gold Coast.
Curtin will, at that moment, wish he and his champion pacer Auckland Reactor were there.
They won't be because Auckland Reactor was pulled out of the series last month by trainer Mark Purdon.
Long-term the decision is almost certainly the right one, with Auckland Reactor having a smorgasbord of rich races in New Zealand this season and the world to conquer next year.
But it will still be hard for Curtin, Auckland Reactor's manager for his North American owners, to watch a A$1 million race the pacing hero could have, and perhaps should have, won.
"It is $1 million after all and it is the Inter," says Curtin ruefully.
"But we are doing the right thing for the horse.
"He is getting bigger and stronger every time I see him and I know he
will be better equipped for the Grand Circuit next season."
But while the decision to bypass the series was made for the right reasons, it is still getting harder to swallow.
The Interdom is thinning out, with names like Divisive and US import Bono's Best gone, Blacks A Fake, Changeover and Gotta Go Cullen in doubtful form and only Melpark Major looking to be in Auckland Reactor's class.
And to twist the knife that little bit more, Auckland Reactor has shown genuine Grand Circuit-level gate speed twice in the past month.
That is so often the difference between winning and losing in
Australia, so Auckland Reactor now has the complete package for an Interdom series.
He looked every inch an Interdom winner in waiting at Addington on
Saturday when he scored the easiest open class win of his career in the $75,000 Summer Cup.
He burst to the lead, dawdled around for 2400m then sprinted up the straight to hold out Awesome Armbro in a repeat of the New Zealand Free-For-All quinella.
Auckland Reactor paced the final 800m in 54.7 seconds, which he could probably do three times a day if asked, so the race itself was little more than a lucrative trial to take his record to 18 wins from 19 starts.
Still, so dominant was the great one that he moved in to $1.40 to win the Trillian Trust Auckland Cup on March 6, a race where that newly-discovered gate speed could be a decisive factor.
Awesome Armbro showed with his second on Saturday he will be an
Auckland Cup factor but it is hard to envisage a scenario under which he will beat Auckland Reactor.
Monkey King was a fighting third but had no chance after having to sit parked for the last 700m, not a fun place to be outside Auckland Reactor.
