Trainer has Ace up his sleeve for Derby
RACING: Sydney trainer David Payne is confident his exciting three-year-old colt Ace High provides him with his best chance of winning today’s Victoria Derby.
Ace High is now into outright $4.40 TAB favouritism for the
$1.5 million classic after a strong win in the Group 1 Spring Champion Stakes last month and is drawn perfectly in barrier three.
It will be Payne’s fourth runner in the race, having finished second with Praecido in 2010, fourth with Criterion in 2013 and eighth with Honorius in 2012.
“He is a better horse than Praecido and Honorius,” Payne said.
“Criterion was much more of a 2000m horse, his class got him the extra trip.
“He (Ace High) is one of the better ones I’ve trained.
“He is not as sharp as Criterion was, but he has got a bit of class about him.
“We think we have a very big chance all going well, but you have got to have the luck on the day.
“If we have the run we want, he is going to be very competitive.”
Ace High has won his past two starts, including a dominant run in the Spring Champion Stakes, and Payne doesn’t have any concerns about the horse going in the Melbourne direction.
“People seem to forget he has been the Melbourne way of going before (when fifth in the VRC Sires Produce in March),” he said.
“We have also galloped him the reverse way of going at Rosehill. It won’t be a problem.”
Payne loved the horse as a yearling when he was at the Magic Million Sales, but doubted he could afford the
well-bred son of High Chaparral.
He secured the colt for $130,000 without an owner in mind, but one of his long-time stable clients John Cordina immediately bought into the horse.
“I didn’t think I was going to be able to get him but we did,” Payne said.
“John has been with me for years and we were at
the sales together. He asked if he could have him and I said ‘it’s a pleasure’.
“He was just a big rangy horse who looked like a stayer. Usually at the Magic Millions they sell sprinters, so maybe that’s why we got him a bit cheaper than I thought we would.”
Earlier in Ace High’s career the horse was a bit of a handful and Payne admits
if it had been up to him alone he would have been gelded.
Fortunately he wasn’t and now looms as a stallion in the making as one of the Group 1-winning sons of the late High Chaparral.
That breeding future could only be further enhanced if the colt can win the Derby.