David Vandyke expects to play a major role at Hawkesbury but loyalty to a horse who has helped him make a successful return to training means he will be elsewhere on Saturday.
Vandyke will start in-form Keith’s Legacy in the $150,000 Rowley Mile (1600m), one of three Listed races at the Hawkesbury stand-alone Saturday meeting.
“It’s the right time to be running him in a stakes race,” Vandyke said. “And the way he’s racing they would want to be going pretty good to beat him.”
In spite of all the positives, Vandyke will make his way to Queensland on Saturday to watch stable star Lamasery run in the Hollindale Cup.
But the trainer’s presence at the Gold Coast will be more out of respect for a stakes-performed middle distance horse who is closer to the end of his career than the start.
Lamasery is the horse who relaunched Vandyke’s training career, graduating to weight-for-age winner last year in a stop-start climb to the top because of injuries.
He will run in the Hollindale more than 50 days after his lone autumn appearance in the Ajax Stakes and Vandyke says there is no way he is going to miss the horse’s return.
“I don’t know how many more runs he has left in him so I want to be there for every one of them,” he said.
If Lamasery’s career does come to a close anytime soon, Keith’s Legacy is giving every indication he will be an able replacement at the top of the pecking order at Vandyke’s Warwick Farm stable.
The former New Zealand galloper set himself up for a Rowley Mile start, en-route to the Scone Cup, with successive wins at Randwick last month.
“He was very dominant both times at Randwick and he’ll come in well on the limit on Saturday,” Vandyke said.
The Rowley Mile has attracted a field of 12 with Class Is Class, one of three runners for premier trainer Chris Waller, the topweight with 59kg.
Waller will also start fellow European imports Beaten Up and Moriarty in a race in which Keith’s Legacy ($4) is the early favourite ahead of Victorian galloper Speediness ($4.80).
