One of my favourite interstaters to catch up with is Sam Doran from the highly successful Aquanita stables. The team have been firing on cylinders with feature wins to Psycologist, Mosheen and Apprehend to name a few in the last fortnight or so.
Sam is one of the most informative guys you can interview and you can even get a feel of the professionalism of the Aquanita set up from the amount of information he can give you, some even hours old and hot off the press.
They had their Aquanita race day at Ballarat on Sunday and by all reports it was a good day had by all. I believe they picked up one winner on the day, and that is why we rang Sam, to talk about recent winners and some we can find that will win soon.
Apprehend is a last start winner of the Listed Werribee Cup over 2600m and will run in the Mornington Cup 2400m on Wednesday. “ Everything panned out good for him (last start) and he is just one of those horses who takes a lot of racing to get fit and know we have him fit hopefully he can keep progressing tomorrow. It is a bit trickier than the Werribee cup because it is a qualifying race for the Caulfield Cup, so it’s becomes tougher.” Doran said. He also mentioned that Apprehend has drawn wide tomorrow and the horse would probably go across, but whether he found the front would be up to Steve King and to how the raced panned out early. But the punters can be happy that the horse is doing extremely well and goes into the race in form, very fit and the stable are happy with him and do have a bit of confidence about them.
Psychologist was a very impressive winner of the mares’ race at Caulfield and looks to have turned the corner. She has been solid in all her preparations, but she may well be getting right back to her best. I asked Sam if it was simply riding her cold that may have helped, but he thought maybe there was another factor also. “Craig being a left handed whip rider I feel may have made a difference as well. She did want to come in a little bit, and Craig gave her a little correction and she really pinged again. The race did pan out perfectly for her as they went hard early and he was able to take a sit, but Craig was very happy with the win.” Sam explained. It looks as though they may keep her around the same level and try to pick off a few more races in the near future. That win really consolidates her as a valuable broodmare and Tony Vasil deserves a lot of credit for the job he has done with the mare, and to get her back after she had a long time off the track early in her career is a great training effort.
Under The Eiffel is a horse I have always had a lot of time for and he worked well this morning with Vasil on top and he will be seen in the very near future. He had a solid hit out over 600m and is not far off a trial. It is still up in the air, but there may be a slim chance that he could run in the Oakleigh plate. That would be an interesting first up assignment, but you would be game to write him off. No matter where he kicks off I’m confident that we will see the best of this horse during this preparation. He has improved each time he comes back in work and with more improvement he could be right in a few group races for sure.
We will stay in touch as always with the Aquanita crew as they are always producing some nice horses and seem to have a constant flow of winners which is always a bonus.
