“Those two wins, especially Saturday, might see him weighted out of the big Cups here next season,” says Ritchie.
“He has an entry for the Sydney Cup [Randwick, April 13], so that will be his aim, as long as it doesn’t rain.
“He’s no good if you even spit on the ground, so we will wait as long as we can before sending him over there, but he is well-weighted for their Cup, and if the weather plays its part, he will go.”
A prominent performance in the Sydney Cup could at least leave the door ajar for a Melbourne Cup campaign.
“I think it will tell us a lot,” says Ritchie. “But if we end up thinking he isn’t a Melbourne Cup horse, because we know how good they need to be these days, then we will probably have to look at other options over there next season because he will be at the top of the handicaps for the staying races here.”
Ritchie and training partner Colm Murray won’t have to travel so far for there next Group 1 target though, with Pearl Of Alsace looking on track for the New Zealand Breeders’ Stakes with her Ellerslie win on Saturday.
“She was very good and it was an ideal first-up run to get her ready for the Breeders, which could come up a strong race.”
The Breeders, worth $400,000 on March 30, looks set to be transferred from Te Aroha to Ellerslie.
Trip still on
Legarto’s Australian Cup campaign is still on, even though she stunned punters when beaten on Saturday.
The wonderful mare nearly fell when checked early but appeared to have her chance after and couldn’t run down leader El Vencedor in the Bonecrusher New Zealand Stakes.
“I don’t know if the interference early cost her in the end but it can’t have helped,” says co-trainer Ken Kelso. “She seems fine, so we will look over here in the next few days, but at this stage, we’re still intending on going to Melbourne.”
Kelso thinks the bigger Flemington track may help Legarto wind up, as Saturday was the second time she has been caught flat-footed at Ellerslie, the other being when she finished second to Desert Lightning in the Aotearoa Classic.
Ironically, those two seconds and her Herbie Dyke win in between were enough for her to win the Summer Bonus worth $500,000, so she left Ellerslie the biggest earner on Saturday.
Legarto remains the equal third favourite for the Australian Cup on March 30.
Chasing the Quokka
Waitak’s sensational Railway-winning sprint is set to carry him all the way to West Australia.
The Matamata 4-year-old is off to the A$5 million Quokka in Perth after being signed to the Trackside Media (Entain/TAB) slot shared with Perth Racing.
Waitak produced one of the performances of the domestic racing season to come from last at the 350m to win the Railway on January 1, so will give New Zealand a rare runner in Perth for trainers Lance O’Sullivan and Andrew Scott.
“This is a great opportunity to take one of our stable stars to uncharted territory for us,” says O’Sullivan.
“While we’ve campaigned horses in the eastern states of Australia, we can’t wait to take Waitak to Perth to have a red-hot go at the Australians.”
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
