KEY POINTS:
The only thing Sir Slick lost in Saturday's group one Starcraft Stakes was the $120,000 winner's cheque.
He certainly lost no caste.
Nor did he lose his Ellerslie maiden tag - 12 starts on our premier racetrack have still to yield victory.
That is in no way significant
- he will win a race at Ellerslie and might have won this one had the advantage of the heads-up-heads-down finish gone his way instead of Gaze's.
And he certainly would have won had he railed as he can left-handed and run straight in the closing stages.
Twice Opie Bosson had to stop riding Sir Slick to straighten him and the pair finished in the centre of the track after rounding the home turn on the rail.
"I couldn't keep him straight," lamented Bosson.
"He wants to continually lay out this way [around]."
So what now for Sir Slick after an already marvellous season?
There is the $200,000 Champions Mile at Ellerslie, but he will have to carry the grandstand in a handicap and there is always the prospect of an unsuitable wet Easter.
And there is the S$3 million ($2.8 million) Singapore International Cup (2000m) on May 20, an invitational race for which Sir Slick would almost be guaranteed an invitation after being nominated along with Dezigna and Final Reality last week.
John Wheeler, one of New Zealand's experts at travelling horses internationally, spent 30 minutes with Graeme Nicholson and co-owner Barry Brown at Ellerslie on Saturday, explaining that taking a horse to a race like the Singapore Cup for the first time is nowhere near as difficult as most first-timers perceive.
As Wheeler pointed out, almost all aspects of putting a horse on an aircraft to other parts of the world come down to common sense.
In his current form Sir Slick would be hugely competitive on Singapore's left-handed circuit.
Jokers Wild's effort in Saturday's A$755,000 ($846,000) Cadbury Guineas in Melbourne provides a marvellous form cross-reference.
Sir Slick came back to beat Jokers Wild after being headed in the Otaki Maori WFA and Jokers Wild came within two strides of toppling champion Australian filly Miss Finland on Saturday.
Sir Slick will not face a horse of any better class than Miss Finland if he heads to Singapore.
Meanwhile, Cambridge mare Gaze denied Sir Slick a fourth consecutive group one when he got in the deciding stride.
Gaze and jockey Mark Du Plessis pressured the frontrunning Sir Slick from the 600m and headed him about 300m out but Sir Slick fought hard and it was only the bob of the head that saw Gaze get home.
Gaze, winner of the group one Doomben Roses in Brisbane last year, is now set to return to Queensland to be aimed at the group one Doomben Cup.
Du Plessis said he had to pressure Sir Slick to have any chance of winning. "If I'd attacked and we'd both dropped out it wouldn't have looked good, but if I'd left him alone she'd never have beaten him."
The victory ended a great Ellerslie carnival for Du Plessis, who also won the Auckland Cup on Wednesday and won the Grenville Hughes Trophy for leading jockey over the 3-day carnival.
