28 September 2017 | Ken Casellas
Eight-time premier trainer Ross Olivieri is full of confidence that Im Full of Excuses will make a successful return to racing by winning the $25,000 Media Guild Cup over 2536m at Gloucester Park on tomorrow night.
The New Zealand-bred six-year-old has excellent prospects of notching his sixth Cup race in the space of 12 months after winning the Group 3 Kalgoorlie, York, Northam and Harvey Cups and the Group 2 Pinjarra Cup last season.
“He will go very, very well first-up,” said Olivieri. “The outside barrier (No. 9) is not ideal, but he can overcome that. This is a good race for him to start his campaign leading up to the TABtouch Inter Dominion championship in a couple of months.
“He’s had three trials, winning the first easily from Sheer Rocknroll at Byford before we were disappointed with his next trial a week later at Pinjarra when he raced in the breeze and finished second to Sheer Rocknroll.
“We worked out that he didn’t derive a lot of benefit from his first trial, so we put a fair bit of work into him and waited a fortnight before trialling him again at Pinjarra, and he went real good (winning by 40m from She Could Be Good, rating 1.57.3 over 2185m after a final 800m in 55.2sec.).”
Im Full of Excuses will again be driven by champion reinsman Chris Lewis, who has won the Media Guild Cup four times — with Village Kid in 1987 and 1991, Paly in 2002 and Has The Answers in 2010. Olivieri has yet to win a Media Guild Cup (which was first run in 1979). The closest Olivieri has been to winning a Media Guild Cup has been with seconds to Franco Amon in 2008 and Gary Bromac in 2010.
Im Full of Excuses has not raced since he finished a close second to Vultan Tin in the 2662m Narrogin Cup on April 8 after racing three wide in the middle stages and then in the breeze.
Olivieri has a good second string in Friday night’s Cup in Sheer Rocknroll, who will be driven by Chris Voak from the No. 1 barrier. A winner at 22 of her 54 starts, she has been unplaced at her past five outings. Olivieri predicts a forward showing from the five-year-old mare, saying: “She was nearly going to win last Friday week when Shannon (Suvaljko) had to take evasive action approaching the home turn.”
The other mares in the Cup, Ideal Alice (barrier two) and Tricky Styx (three) will have plenty of support from their favourable draws.
Ideal Alice, trained by Gary Hall Snr, maintained her excellent form when she set the pace and was beaten by a half-head by Condrieu over 2536m last Friday week. The Jesse Moore-trained Tricky Styx resumed racing after a short spell four Fridays ago when she enjoyed an ideal passage, one-out and one-back, when a sound fourth behind Run Oneover.
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