Natalie Tanner has never been through a more gut-wrenching week.
The Muriwai Beach trainer has her hugely-talented stable star Who Knows in career-best form.
But he's stuck on the Mudgway Partsworld Stakes' ballot, desperately needing one scratching to make tomorrow's $250,000 field.
To make the disappointment worse, the
gelding's former owner, John Hung, is flying in from Hong Kong to watch the 6-year-old.
As a back-up, Tanner also has Who Knows entered for a Tauranga sprint tomorrow - an unlikely option - and the third leg of the $1 million Hastings Pick6, the Waste Management 1600.
But it's the 1400m Mudgway that Tanner's had her heart set on winning with Who Knows, even before she took him to his first New Zealand trial, at Cambridge last May.
"It's just gut-wrenching," conceded Tanner yesterday. "People looked at me sideways when I nominated him but it's always been the one I dreamed about winning.
"I think the horse has every right to be in there in front of one or two others. Aimee's Idol we've beaten fair and square."
In hindsight, Tanner says she should have run Who Knows in the Foxbridge Plate to boost the horse's black-type credentials.
But the advice she had from the club was that the field would drop away enough to allow her impressive winner of his only two starts to make the line-up fresh from an open 1300m victory at Ruakaka on August 4.
Barring a minor mishap to an opponent before scratching time tomorrow morning, Tanner is now staring at a case of deja vu.
Six years ago she had an in-form Flyingpig in the same condition for the Mudgway, only to be forced to run for a consolation prize on the Hastings card, which he won.
Tanner is not so confident Who Knows can repeat the feat tomorrow.
The horse has no form over 1600m in Hong Kong but rider Allan Peard is confident and Tanner says he works at Muriwai Beach like he'll cope.
"If he does maybe then we can look at the Stoney Bridge, or the Captain Cook Stakes," said Tanner.
She believes the left-hand track tomorrow shouldn't worry him.
He won a Cambridge trial at his first run in that direction in May.
