KEY POINTS:
The Ellerslie carnival is over for Wahid.
The million-dollar earner went one of the worse races of his career when 4.6 lengths behind Sir Slick at Ellerslie yesterday.
"I knew something was wrong, he ran the 1600m in 1.36.75. He could do that in trackwork carrying me," said trainer Allan Sharrock.
He asked that Wahid be scoped after the disappointing performance.
"I thought he must have bled internally, and Leith [Innes] thought the same.
"He was jogging on the corner and went up to win, but only went two strides. He came down the rest of the home straight doing half pace for him."
The scope revealed considerable mucus in Wahid's lungs.
"Clearly he's picked up a virus and this is the result."
Wahid will now obviously miss his clash with Xcellent in the $200,000 Zabeel Classic at Ellerslie on Boxing Day, which promised to be one of the highlights of the carnival.
"He can have an easy time and I'll aim him at Trentham late in January," said Sharrock.
"The beautiful thing for me is that there was no blood. If he'd bled it would have been a whole different scenario.
"And I'm pleased we found something. If the scope had found nothing I'd be scratching my head."
However it was a much happier scene in the winner's stall after trainer Graeme Nicholson didn't point to the stakemoney part of his racebook as he marched across the Ellerslie birdcage to greet Sir Slick.
He had his forefinger pressed hard against the stats' line in the book.
Nicholson wanted everyone to focus on the 15-zip record on Ellerslie for the near million-dollar earner.
It now reads 16-1, something the Te Aroha trainer sees as a monkey off his back. Sir Slick had tried hard to break his Ellerslie maiden a number of times without success and yesterday it came quite easily. But then with 4kg off his back virtue of Roxanne Rattley's apprentice allowance and Wahid ailing, the path to victory was pretty clear.
Rattley herself hadn't won at Ellerslie either, her two wins coming at Manawatu and Te Aroha, which was her local track when apprenticed to Graeme Nicholson before she transferred to Shaune Ritchie at Cambridge.
Rattley got the ride because she volunteered to travel back to Te Aroha a couple of times a week when Nicholson recently had staff problems.
The thrill of winning on her favourite horse at Ellerslie almost got the better of Rattley. "My mind went blank for a couple of seconds when I was leading about 220m out," she happily admitted.
"I thought, 'My God, I have to snap back into this'."
Rattley said Sir Slick had wanted to tear along in front and she did everything she could to take hold and attempt to rate the horse.
"In the home straight I knew those other horses were there, but I didn't know where.
"I could hear on the course speakers that I had a bit of a margin."
Sir Slick thrives on his racing and yesterday's victory will tighten him perfectly for the Zabeel Classic.
