A wide barrier and uncharted territory isn’t enough to deter trainer Matt Laurie from wanting to run South Australian Derby winner Escado in Saturday’s Andrew Ramsden Stakes at Flemington.
Laurie became the newest member in the Group One-winning trainers’ club when Escado took out the SA Derby last Saturday week.
And after careful consideration Laurie decided to press on to the Listed Andrew Ramsden with Escado where the three-year-old will take on older horses over 3200m.
Escado came up with barrier 17 in the 19-horse field on Wednesday which Laurie “wasn’t overly pleased about” but he preferred to look at positives.
“It’s two miles and they’ll sort themselves out,” he said.
“I’ll probably want him to be midfield or something like that (in running).”
Laurie said the way Escado came through his 1/3-4 length Derby win helped make the decision to give him one more run.
“I had a long think about it and thought he had always shown he wanted a bit of a trip and it’s an opportunity to have a look at it,” Laurie said.
“Sometimes you can’t always tell until race day but everything seems to say there’s really no reason not to run him.”
The Andrew Ramsden is over the Melbourne Cup course but Laurie isn’t looking at the race as a Cup audition.
“I don’t know that he’s up to that,” he said.
“But certainly it will give us an opportunity to see how he travels over that sort of distance, and it should season and harden him up for next time around.”
While Escado is the Group One winner in the Laurie camp, the trainer believes Tigerland, who runs in Saturday’s Henry Bolte Handicap (1700m), is his best horse.
A gutsy last-start winner at Caulfield over 1400m, Tigerland has won five of his six starts.
Laurie has taken blinkers off Tigerland and replaced them with winkers as he wants him to settle better.
“Obviously he’s a pretty good horse,” Laurie said.
“It’s the same thing with him, there’s no reason to suggest he can’t run as well as he has been. At the same time it’s his seventh run so you can’t always tell, but I’m looking forward to get him over the 1700 metres.”
