KEY POINTS:
Exciting galloper Veloz looks set to tackle a Group One race at only his fourth start.
The Black Minnaloushe gelding is unbeaten, winning his third race, the listed $55,000 Mason Appliances 1400, at New Plymouth on Saturday, with ease.
Trainers Russell and Robyn Rogers, who own the Rodmor Stud, are eyeing the $200,000 Captain Cook Stakes (1600m) at Trentham on October 27 as his next target.
"We are just taking it race by race and haven't made a decision, but the Captain Cook is one we are looking at," said Russell Rogers.
That seems a tall order, seeing he only had his first start on August 14, but Veloz looks special.
"It might seem to be asking a lot, but every time we have asked him to step up he has done it and done it easily each time."
Veloz led throughout the 1400m event on Saturday and had the race wrapped up at the top of the straight, beating Sequential by a length with a head back to Flypass in third spot and posting 1:22.4.
"Jockey Mark Hills got up off him and said we don't know how good he is, because he hasn't been tested yet," Russell said.
"It took him to the 800 metre to pull him up, so he was just full of running."
Veloz did not race at two or three.
He came close to breaking a track record at Taupo at his first start on August 14 and then waltzed away for a big win at Hastings on September 1.
He was ridden in his first two starts by Saturday's rider Mark Hills who said after that race, "I think he could be very, very good."
Veloz is a half brother to Maguire, an Auckland Cup winner.
Earlier in the day the Murray Baker-trained Nom du Jeu, who is entered for the Victoria Derby, won plenty of admirers with a dashing half-neck second in a rating-70 1800-metre event.
Baker enjoyed better luck in the opening race, a 1600m maiden, when his charge Mrs Tittlemouse won in the hands of leading jockey Michael Walker, who had beencharged with careless riding following an incident at Ashburton on Friday in which Jamie Bates was injured.
Bates was winded and bruised when his mount Your Call fell after 300 metres in the $55,000 Ray Coupland Stakes. Walker, who was on the favourite Saperavi, was charged over the incident, but the hearing was delayed because he had to catch a plane to return home.
Chad Ormsby, who rode four winners at Ashburton and finished second on both his mounts at Ellerslie yesterday, was suspended for three days for causing interference while riding Our Fred. He will not be able to ride at either Hastings or Riccarton this Saturday.
- NZPA
