ZAAKI FIRED UP FOR EPIC CLASH
Defending Hollindale Stakes champion Zaaki to face stern test against young star Ayrton
AYRTON is the spider-bite victim and one of the hype horses of Australian racing while Zaaki is the rolled gold weight-for-age star.
Mick Price is the seasoned hardhead and experienced Group 1 winning horseman while Annabel Neasham is the new trainer on the rise who is rapidly taking racing by storm.
There’s much to play for in the clash of the titans between the two big guns of Saturday’s Group 2 Hollindale Stakes on the Gold Coast.
The winter carnival might already be under way but this is the first real heavyweight battle that will put bums on seats and have plenty of eyes glued to the telly on Saturday afternoon.
The first word goes to Neasham, who has $1.65 Hollindale favourite Zaaki looking to go back-to-back in the race which started the import’s march to stardom last year.
She knows Price well after starting her Australian career working for Ciaron Maher who then trained alongside Price at Caulfield.
Neasham has huge respect for Price and his exciting horse Ayrton, who has been a star of the sprinting ranks but is now being trained as a middle-distance machine.
But Neasham insists Ayrton will know he is in the big league when he tangles with Zaaki on Saturday, ahead of a likely return bout in the Group 1 Doomben Cup a fortnight later.
“Mick is a fantastic trainer and he looks like he has got a really handy horse that has got a bit of hype around him,” Neasham said.
“And probably for a good reason, he had a long lay-off and he won very well when he resumed at Caulfield the other day. But he’s going to have to step it up again if he’s going to try to beat a pretty good weight-for-age horse in Zaaki. We go into the race respecting Ayrton, that’s for sure.
“But I still feel Zaaki is in great form and I think he is going to be very hard to beat.”
Zaaki showed he was every bit the feisty personality horse when he fired up on the Gold Coast on Friday morning as Neasham led him on a walk. But that’s nothing too unusual for the spirited racing star.
The potential for a heavy track on the Gold Coast adds another fascinating dimension to the clash of the titans in the Hollindale.
It would arguably be advantage Zaaki – given the three-time Group 1 and All-star Mile winner delighted Neasham when he performed so brilliantly last time in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes on a Heavy 10 Randwick track.
On the day, Zaaki was only beaten by one of the rides of the century from Nash Rawiller on Think It Over.
Price, who co-trains with Michael Kent Jr, knows Zaaki will be extremely tough to topple in the Queensland winter carnival.
But anything is possible, especially since Ayrton has already come back from falling ill after a spider bite and he is being reinvented to race with more stamina.
“He (Zaaki) is fitter, more condi
tioned and more seasoned than us, so I would not be overly optimistic that we can beat him in the Hollindale,” Price said.
“But we have always wanted to try him between a mile and 2000m. I used to see Annabel every single day, I know her quite well, we all socialised together (at Caulfield). Her rise as a trainer has been massive, massive.
“I find a lot of new people come in as the new kid on the block, but it comes down to who is around you, you have to maintain the absolute funda
mentals of horse training. I think she has good people around her.”
Another intriguing element of the Hollindale clash will be pitting James Mcdonald (Zaaki) against Hugh Bowman on $6 second pick Ayrton.
It would be unlikely if the Hollindale is anything else but a two-horse race but it’s possible Kerrin Mcevoy and the father and son training team of Peter and Paul Snowden might have something to say about that.
They have snuck import Huetor ($10) into the Hollindale field.