So can he be in his best form without a race for a four weeks?<\/p>\n
\u201cI am sure he can,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just took his rug off and had a good look over him and he is exactly where he needs to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Road To Paris will go to Randwick having not raced since his Ellerslie triumph, which was the seventh New Zealand Derby winner James has trained, two of them in partnership with Wellwood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am not worried about the month between runs, we have kept the work up to him and he will be fit enough,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will work 2000m again either tomorrow [Wednesday] on Thursday, depending on the weather forecast, as ideally we like to do that work on the plough but with rain coming, it might get closed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen depending when that gallop is, he can go again on Saturday or Monday and fly over on Tuesday.\u201d<\/p>\n
James has revealed he and Wellwood didn\u2019t need to chase champion Hong Kong jockey Zac Purton, who will ride Road To Paris in the Derby, as his Australian representatives contacted them.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is great to have Zac on and we are looking forward to getting over there because he has already proven he is a Derby horse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stable heads into the busy next week in a red-hot patch of form, sitting fourth on the premiership with 37 wins worth over $3.2 million in stakes and, just as importantly, the best strike rate of the major trainers in the country with a win every 5.59 starts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been a very satisfying year and that strike rate is really important to us,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are results we are very proud of, considering the size of our team, but we\u2019d like some more over the next few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
The stable has winning chances in both Group 1s at Trentham this Saturday, with She\u2019s A Dealer in the $600,000 Sport Nation Thoroughbred Breeders Stakes and two reps, Excite and St Monica, in the $550,000 Courtesy Ford Manawat\u016b Sires\u2019 Produce Stakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsually we wouldn\u2019t rush a mare like She\u2019s A Dealer into a weight-for-age race but we think she is good enough,\u201d James said.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has been racing at a very high level and should have won the Cuddle Stakes last start and if she had won, giving her a shot at this Group 1 would have been a no-brainer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we are treating it as she did win and giving her her chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
It is even rarer for James and Wellwood\u2019s barn to have two juveniles in a Group 1 and James says they are very different types.<\/p>\n
\u201cExcite is very strong and up for a race like this so he has to go whereas the filly [St Monica] is a very different type, a bit more fragile and we are sure she will be better at 3.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut she is also very talented and it is a Group 1, so she deserves her shot after her fresh-up win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s Trentham meeting hosts five black-type races to end the Group 1 part of the season on a high.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So can he be in his best form without a race for a four weeks? \u201cI am sure…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":345725,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5195,9436,16123,47738,8609,14568,9860,111,43,139,69,90,6943,15026,3512,1314,184115,1734,61,6382,1533,11587],"class_list":["post-345724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-be","tag-chase","tag-cover","tag-derby","tag-double","tag-horse","tag-king","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-paris","tag-plane","tag-racing","tag-road","tag-smiled","tag-sydney","tag-to","tag-took","tag-will","tag-yesterday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=345724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345724\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/345725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=345724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=345724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=345724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}