TWO of Mark Purdon’s Breeders Crown big guns will have to step out of their age group for warm-up harness racing in Victoria next weekend.
Finding races for megastar 3-year-old (Our) Waikiki Beach and gun 2-year-old Pacing Major has proven very challenging for Purdon.
“I entered Our Waikiki Beach for Melton (last Friday) but the race was scrapped and Pacing Major is a nuggety sort of horse who will need racing before the Crown,” Purdon said.
“My only option is to run them against older horses.”
Purdon has nominated (Our) Waikiki Beach for an open-aged metropolitan maiden race (M0) at Melton on Friday night.
“And I’ve put Pacing Major in against older horses at Ballarat on Saturday night because there isn’t a 2-year-old race here he’s eligible to run in,” he said.
Purdon said his five-horse Breeders Crown team was thriving at Anton Golino’s state-of-the-art training complex near Ballarat.
“This place is as good as I’ve seen in this part of the world. It’s truly world class,” he said.
“It’s a lot like Jimmy Takter’s (New Jersey) stable and Anton trains a lot like he does, too.”
Purdon is also enjoying spending time his sons Michael and Nathan, who both now work for Golino.
“It’s great. It was a real buzz to see Nathan win that Group 1 in Queensland with Ohoka Punter,” he said.
In other stable news, Purdon said headline horses Have Faith In Me, Lazarus and Smolda were all eight weeks into their training campaigns.
“They all seem to have come back well,” he said.
Asked about the Perth Inter Dominion, he said: “We’re keen to be part of it, but it’s too early to say which horse or horses will go across.
“In the case of Have Faith In Me, we don’t have to make a decision until mid-October which way we go and we’ll know more about how he’s handling the standing-start racing by then,” he added.
Adam Hamilton