KEY POINTS:
Te Aroha trainer Colin Fache doesn't know exactly where the Australian calls are coming from.
He just prays Power Cut's Hamilton-based owner Emma Dowdeswell keeps turning them down.
Dowdeswell knocked back a $150,000 Aussie offer to buy today's Pukekohe drawcard before he quit maidens at Matamata on November 23.
And she still wasn't cracking when they doubled the price after Power Cut's equally impressive next-up win in R76 grade at Ellerslie on December 2.
Fache says his former Ra Ora Stud colleague is having too much fun to sell now.
Since tackling middle distances on firm ground, Power Cut has emerged as one of the most exciting lower-grade graduates this season.
Fache, 57, has no hesitation in naming Power Cut as the best he's had - and that includes the six-race winner Just Don't Know he prepared from his former Taranaki base.
He believes a handful of factors explain Power Cut surfacing as an early favourite for the $60,000 Dunstan Feeds Championship Final at Ellerslie on January 1.
One of the most telling of those is the advice he got from riders Grant Cooksley and regular pilot Lisa Cropp.
"After he won a trial at Thames in the wet we thought he was just a winter mud horse," admits Fache.
"But Lisa and Grant said he wasn't handling the tracks, even though he was still running seconds and thirds.
"So I gave him five weeks off and brought him back. He's out of a Volksraad mare so that explains why he doesn't like the wet."
Fache admits today's Dunstan Feeds Qualifier wasn't originally on the schedule for Power Cut's championship assault.
The Daggers Drawn four-year-old was headed for a similar event at Te Rapa on Saturday.
But with Cropp committed to ride in the Manawatu Cup the same day, Fache switched plans and opted for Pukekohe instead.
"He's got to step up again at Counties, but I'm really happy with him," said Fache.
Despite the lack of depth in the open class staying ranks - last Saturday's Waikato Cup winner Bak Da Chief only quit maidens on September 6 - Fache isn't rushing Power Cut to the top.
He's bypassing the majors this summer and instead targeting the softer New Zealand St Leger option in March.
Pukekohe rival Twopaddocks could spoil the build-up party.
The Chief Bearhart gelding hasn't set the world on fire yet as a four-year-old.
But you get the feeling he could strike in a race like this.
He won in a slick time against similar company over 2100m at Ellerslie in February, before finishing a little under five lengths adrift of Wahid in the Mercedes Derby.
* Early fixed odds favourites for the Dunstan Final (Ellerslie, January 1) yesterday were:
$8 Casa de Campo, Arthur Pendragon; $9 Darringdo; $10 The Fuzz; $12 Authoress, Speedalot, Twopaddocks; $14 Power Cut, Redwings.
