If the talented mare Warwarick wins the Bagot Handicap at Flemington on Tuesday it will be more than a reward for trainer Bryce Stanaway’s skill and patience.
It will be justice.
Warwarick comes to the Bagot on the back of two outstanding wins in restricted company, the latest by 12 lengths at Ballarat last week.
She also arrives for her toughest test to date after stints with two other trainers – one of them Bart Cummings – and without a training gallop for a couple of months.
But for Stanaway, success in a race he first won 11 years ago would complete a journey that started when he broke Warwarick in as a two-year-old, only to lose her before she got to the races.
“I broke her in and I thought she was a special horse there and then,” Stanaway said.
“For whatever reason she went to Bart Cummings and then to another trainer and now she’s back with me and the circle’s complete.”
Warwarick returned Stanaway’s Torquay stables mid-year in a condition that barely resembled that in which she’d left a couple of years earlier.
“She came back to me with four flat tyres,” he said.
“I thought I’d be lucky to get her to the races her feet were that bad.”
Not only has Stanaway, a former farrier, attended to the foot problems and got Warwarick to the races, he’s coaxed three good wins from her and now has her on the verge of a Listed victory.
After that, he isn’t game to say.
“I think she’s capable of something very special,” he said.
“I’m asking a lot of her, it’s a big rise in class, but if she wins I’d say she’s exceptional.”
Stanaway, a trainer who is invariably represented in races at the extreme end of the distance range, will also run Crafty Cruiser in the Bagot, a race he won in 2002 and 2003 with Bold Bard.
Both horses are likely to go on to the VRC’s second summer staying feature the Andrew Ramsden Stakes (3200m).
“I like training stayers … you’ve got to make them,” he said.
“That’s what I like. I live and sleep with them, I know every bit of feed they’ve eaten, every bit of work they’ve done.”
With Warwarick, that’s not such a difficult thing.
Stanaway says she’s never had a gallop on his training track, “she only ever gallops in her races”.
She will need to produce one of her best on Tuesday, and her trainer is confident she will.
