Payne has Ace up his sleeve for Vic Derby

TRAINER David Payne is confident Ace High provides him with his best chance yet of winning a Victoria Derby.

Ace High is into outright $4.60 favouritism with UBET for the $1.5 million classic on Saturday off the back of a strong win in the Group 1 Spring Champion Stakes at Randwick last month and a perfect draw in barrier three.

The colt will be Payne’s fourth runner in the 2500m race. The Sydney trainer finished second with Praecido in 2010, fourth with Criterion in 2013 and eighth with Honorius in 2012. Criterion went on to win more than $7 million in prizemoney.

“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 was dominant in the Spring Champion Stakes (2000m) and Payne has no concerns about racing anticlockwise.

“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 at the 2016 Magic Million sales on the Gold Coast 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 long-time stable client John Cordina immediately bought into the horse.

“He was just a big, rangy horse who looked like a stayer,” he said. “Usually at the Magic Millions, they sell sprinters, so maybe that’s why we got him a bit cheaper than I thought we would.”