By Michael Guerin
Champion trainer Mark Purdon is vowing to work on his Achilles heal leading into the back to the future Auckland Trotting Cup.
The Cup returns to the December 31 day meeting at Alexandra Park and reverts to a 3200m standing start after being tried as a mobile 2700m in March for much of the last decade.
Purdon and training partner Natalie Rasmussen have the readymade favourite for the Cup in Have Faith In Me, who was allowed to bypass last Friday’s NZ Free-For-All to concentrate on Alexandra Park next month.
Coming off a sensational three-year-old season, Have Faith In Me appeals as the next big thing in Australasian pacing but he has one obvious weakness, one which Purdon admits he has seen too many times in his own horses in recent years.
Have Faith In Me has blown both his standing start, the latest at Ashburton two starts ago, with his only two defeats this year being from behind the tapes.
That mirrors the pattern of many Purdon-trained superstars in the last few years who have come out of almost exclusively mobile racing at two, three and four into standing start racing when they reach open class.
That is why Auckland Reactor once dodged a New Zealand Cup, while a poor beginning almost certainly cost Smolda last week’s New Zealand Cup.
And while Adore Me won the great race last year she was gifted a walk up start but went on to blow the start of the Hunter Cup last February, losing all chance as a red hot favourite.
“It is something I think our stable can definitely improve on,” admits Purdon. “It has cost us a few big races and I think we will start giving horses like Have Faith In Me more standing starts at home.
“I have never been one to give them too many standing starts, especially once they started to get it right, because sometimes it can make them go the other way.
“But so many of the big races are stands and Have Faith In Me needs some work on that.”
Purdon admits instances like the normally-reliable Smolda’s gallop in the Cup last Tuesday was not helped by the variance between pure standing starts and near walk-up starts, with last week’s Addington carnival seeming to have a mix of both.
While Have Faith In Me will headline a team of up to 15 horses Purdon and Rasmussen will have in the north next month, neither Smolda or Messini will be part of it.
“Messini has gone back to Brent (Lilley in Victoria) for racing over there and we just don’t think Smolda races his best at Alexandra Park. “So we will let him miss the Auckland Cup and he will be aimed at the Victoria and Hunter Cups at Melton.”
He will be joined there by at least of the stable’s top three-year-olds in Lazarus and/or Chase The Dream, both of who will come to Auckland next month as well before contesting the Victoria Derby.
But the unbeaten Our Waikiki Beach won’t race here, being reserved for Australian racing in the first part of his season.
Didjamakem Bolt is likely to remain in the south for the country cups circuit but other Cup week stars like Prince Fearless will be coming north.
Purdon says he has turned the page on a bizarre meeting last Friday where he had a series of shock defeats which cost punters hundreds of thousands of dollars, much of that money he had put in their pockets three days earlier when winning six race on Cup Day.
“It was just one of those really strange days,” he suggested. “We had a month of bad luck in one day but it was a lot of little things.
A horse like Superfecta galloped when he was going to win and Prince Fearless didn’t back up that well after the first day win. “We have had plenty of big days where things have gone our way so we can’t dwell on it too much.”
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