No obstacles for Zed Em as star jumper sizes up Grand Annual

PATRICK Payne believes his star jumper Zed Em is ready this year to tackle the gruelling schedule of the Brierly Steeplechase (3450m) tomorrow and the Grand Annual Steeplechase (550mm) on Thursday.

Last year after Zed Em won the Briefly Steeplechase, Payne said he didn’t want to back him up two days later because he wasn’t sure whether he could run the trip.

This year he knows he can, as he won the South Australian equivalent — the Great Eastern Steeplechase — at his last start, which is over 4950m.

Payne said there’s another reason why Zed Em will run in the Grand Annual — he needs races with lots of jumps.

“He’s such a good jumper. He needs races where there are lots of jumps as he’s sweet into the fence and he gets to the other side even quicker. After Warrnambool the races don’t have as many jumps,” Payne said.

Payne has secured champion jumps rider Steven Pateman to ride Zed Em in both of the races. Zed Em has had 15 jumps starts for ten wins and is a $2.90 favourite with TAB fixed odds to win.

On Thursday he will race against his stablemate No Song No Supper, who won the 2016 Grand Annual Steeplechase and finished second last year to Regina Coeli.

No Song No Supper finished second in the Great East- ern behind Zed Em but Payne said he could have finished closer than the four lengths between them but he jumped the second last badly.

“He meets Zed Em 3.5 kilos better but my main worry is that he’s a bit older and whether he can still do it at ten years of age.”

Warrnambool Racing Club chief executive Peter Downes said they would race on a Soft 6 track tomorrow. He said they had 40mm of rain a fortnight ago but they had kept the track soft since through irrigation as they didn’t want a hard track for the jumps carnival.

Downes said pre-bookings were up eight per cent.

“Last year we had 30,000 over the three days, if we could match that I’d be thrilled.”