He coughed when he was back in the tie-up stalls after the race, but we suspected that was just grit down his throat and a scope later proved that was the case, |
He has a cult following in New Zealand because of the record, ... They haven't seen a horse do what he has done. He beat the older horses at weight-for-age at three and won the derby having not run for five weeks and has returned to win two over there. |
He is a nice long horse everywhere, ... A very athletic horse. I wouldn't say he is any oil painting but he is a horseman's horse. Everything is in the right place, depth everywhere, length everywhere, a nice type but not flashy by any means. |
He was one no one wanted, |
He went into our winter spell as our best derby chance, |
I don't think I've seen a horse with a turn of foot like him for quite some time. The first time Mike hits him he just explodes. |
I said to Mike [brother] recently that we might just have our next VRC Derby runner. |
I'll be surprised if we don't out-sprint her, |
If they want to loiter, we won't be against taking off, |
If we go to Hong Kong, it then gets too tight to do the quarantine, have a break and be back in Melbourne for the Australian Cup and on to Dubai. |
Paul does all the work, inspects all the yearlings at a sale and then we go through them together, form a final list, and then decide what to buy, |
Paul kept a small share, we can't afford to keep a share in all of them, |
The firmer the track the better for I don't want his sprint nullified, |
To be honest, if I hadn't gone through a marriage split-up and Paul hadn't, we probably would have kept most of him but financially we couldn't afford to at the time, |
We know we have an exceptional horse, we don't have to panic, there is a lot of money on the international circuit and a lot ahead of this horse, |