Warrnambool trainer Matthew Williams will run Reigning Meteor in Sydney in a bid to find wetter ground for the sprinter and dodge some formidable opposition in Melbourne.
Reigning Meteor is also entered for Saturday’s Listed A R Creswick Series Final (1200m) at Flemington but the three-year-old has already arrived in Sydney to run in an 1100m benchmark race against his own age at Randwick.
The son of Northern Meteor has three wins and a second from four starts on tracks rated soft or worse and will be ridden by apprentice Damien Thornton.
An expectation Randwick will be softer than Flemington on Saturday prompted Williams to opt for the Sydney race.
“And there’s probably two or three of them we thought he would probably struggle to beat on dry ground at Flemington,” Williams said.
“Husson Eagle, Rough Justice and Illustrious Lad have probably had his measure the last two starts when they’ve met and our only advantage was going to be if it happened to be a wet track.
“But that was probably unlikely looking at the weather forecast and the way the track has been.”
Flemington was rated a soft (5) on Tuesday.
Reigning Meteor has been unplaced in his past two starts at Flemington on good tracks but won first-up on soft during the Warrnambool carnival in May.
Williams said LuckyI’mbarefoot, a winner of a heat of the Winter Championship at Cranbourne last start, would probably head to Adelaide for a 1400m race on Saturday week instead of running in the Winter Championship Final (1600m).
Stablemate Clairvaux will be after back-to-back wins at Flemington when he runs in Saturday’s Country Cup Final (2000m) with Craig Newitt to ride.
Williams says Clairvaux enjoys having a space between his races which is why it will be three weeks between his Flemington win and Saturday’s race.
