Trainer Gerald Ryan is prepared to forgive and forget Hot Snitzel’s Prime Minister’s Cup performance and will press on with the four-year-old’s winter carnival campaign.
Multiple stakes winner Hot Snitzel was second favourite in Saturday’s Listed race won by Famous Seamus but weakened in the straight to finish 13th of the 16 runners.
Extensive tests failed to detect any problems and Hot Snitzel will head to the BRC Sprint (1350m) on May 18 ahead a possible start in the Group One Doomben 10,000 a week later.
“We had him scoped last night and there was nothing there,” Ryan said.
“He cleaned his feed up. He seems just fine.
“It was like he just turned it up.
“I think we need to forget that race and move on.”
Hot Snitzel, who missed last year’s Queensland winter after undergoing throat surgery, had some of his best results at the 2011 carnival.
At the Prime Minister’s Cup meeting two years ago, he romped home in the Ken Russell Memorial Classic.
After running third at his next start he won the Group Two Sires’ Produce Stakes then ran second to Benfica in the Group One TJ Smith.
He travelled north this year on the back of a comprehensive win in last month’s Group Three Sebring Stakes at Rosehill.
Ryan trained Hot Snitzel’s sire Snitzel to win the 2006 Oakleigh Plate and has enjoyed more success than most with his progeny.
Among his stakes winners is Flying Snitzel, a Group Two winner over Norzita in the Kewney Stakes in March.
The filly failed to reproduce that form in two run over the Sydney carnival but after a couple of weeks in the paddock is back at Rosehill to be prepared for the Scone Guineas on May 18, a race now mooted as a possible target for star colt All Too Hard.
Dances On Stars, another Snitzel stablemate, pleased Ryan with his third in the Gold Coast Guineas but Group One ambitions for Snitzerland have been shelved for the time being.
The filly was the unplaced favourite in the Robert Sangster Stakes in Adelaide, which signalled the end of her preparation and she was withdrawn from next week’s Goodwood.
“There’s nothing wrong with her but we have decided she will go to the paddock on Monday and we will concentrate on getting her ready for the early spring,” Ryan said.
