He's entitled to earn a quid from the horse - he paid close to half a million for him at the Kentucky sales as a weanling and sent him to Craig Ritchie in Sydney.
Things went wrong to start with, but after gelding, the son of Rock Hard Ten has started to show what he is worth. His midweek win last week was stunning.
He settled last and when he went around the field he did it so quickly it was startling. Jason Collett had only to shake the reins at Tonopah to send him away.
Ritchie has a huge amount of time for the horse.
"He can both sprint and stay, despite the fact that race was at 2200m. Having said that he's not a real short-course horse, but his sprint is such that he'll win at most distances if he's trained for it.
"The big thing about him is that he has a phenomenal recovery rate. I think he might one day get two miles because he's a horse that likes to find his feet and can work into a race when he's wanted.
"He ran through the line very well the other day, but he's had only a handful of starts and when he's had, say, six more starts, he'll run through the line even better.
"Because he's Northern Hemisphere-bred he's six months behind the others of his age and he's still learning. He loves chasing and he's pretty good."
Horses to follow from Te Rapa: Definitely Irish Moon. Jumping up a grade made no difference and he made them look like they were in a different class.
Joe Barnes and his mates are going to have a lot of fun with this horse. He showed he hadn't handled the sticky track at Ellerslie last start when he sprinted from the back of the field to win nicely. On the right type of footing he's going to go through a couple of grades. His trainer Emily Holmes knows what she's about.
Spin Doctor, well, winter weights are probably going to get the better of him pretty quickly, but he's just as good on decent tracks, so the spring is probably going to be kind to him. Jubilate had that Te Rapa sprint won on Saturday but Spin Doctor refused to concede in the last stride.
Congratulations to apprentice Brett Murray for the way he handled his two winning rides Up Your Slieve and Karla Bruni at Trenthan.
No one knows a lot about this boy, but he positioned his two winners beautifully on a very tough track and made sure they received the full benefit of the 4kg claim. Well done.
Not difficult to work out why California Chrome struggled to get the 2014m of the Belmont Stakes in New York yesterday to complete a remarkable Triple Crown.
The dirt track was fetlock deep. When a horse is questionable getting the extreme 3-year-old distance after 2000m of the Kentucky Derby and back to 1900m of The Preakness, the last thing he needs is a track as deep and testing as yesterday's.
His rider probably felt he couldn't take chances going for inside runs when a result might have meant US$20 million or more, but coming four wide on the bend didn't help.
Hindsight is the crutch of experts, but if he'd taken the inside run from the trail it would have eventually been there for him and the result might have been different. That's racing.
