Furthermore, the majority of grass meetings are held in summer and it is even rarer for a horse of Akuta\u2019s quality \u2013 an Auckland Cup-winning millionaire \u2013 to be starting on a grass track.<\/p>\n
It is almost impossible to know whether Akuta would justify his $1.50 should he start on a track rated soft or worse today, but Nathan Purdon says a hard run on a wet track isn\u2019t their main concern.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause he has had a tendon injury in the past we wouldn\u2019t want him starting on a bad track,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is how they can reinjure a tendon because if it was really wet, his hoof would go into the grass quite deep and the tendon gets stretched when they pull it back out.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday [Saturday] it sounds like the track isn\u2019t too bad but we will wait until the morning to make a decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will ring somebody down there [Methven] tomorrow and see what the track is like before we decide but we won\u2019t take any risks.\u201d <\/p>\n
With Akuta rated a $1.50 chance by the TAB bookmakers, his scratching would totally reshape the market and punters have very little wet-grass track form to work with, especially over the already testing 3000m distance.<\/p>\n
The most logical form reference is pacers who have previously performed well on grass tracks; they should be more comfortable on wetter turf than the pacers who have only tasted success on all-weather tracks.<\/p>\n
Two of those are Franco Marek and American Me, the latter having won this race two years ago and being a one-paced stayer, would seem most at home should today become a real slog.<\/p>\n
So if Akuta does come out, Franco Marek looks the best win chance but American Me the best value and a good place bet at $2.40.<\/p>\n
If Akuta doesn\u2019t use today as his next step to the IRT New Zealand Cup on November 11, he will instead head to the Canterbury Classic at Addington on October 17.<\/p>\n
That already shapes as one of the races of the spring, as Akuta would be likely to meet the Holmes D G quinellamates from Friday night in Sooner The Bettor and Merlin, as well as Republican Party, We Walk By Faith and Don\u2019t Stop Dreaming, together comprising the majority of the local pacers with any chance against Aussie raiders Leap To Fame and Swayzee in the New Zealand Cup.<\/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":"Furthermore, the majority of grass meetings are held in summer and it is even rarer for a horse…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179133,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[79533,79536,51354,18771,79534,25456,79541,79540,17384,79535,4803,79537,79538,42632,26685,79532,9581,3004,79539,101,1850,15455,37761,56,54,55,11552],"class_list":["post-179132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-akuta","tag-avoid","tag-biggest","tag-but","tag-dominates","tag-glamour","tag-heading","tag-hoof","tag-into","tag-keen","tag-market","tag-methven","tag-mud","tag-once","tag-other","tag-pacer","tag-race","tag-racing","tag-shoe","tag-sports","tag-to","tag-today","tag-trainers","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179132"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179132\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}