Peter Moody has ruled out running I Wish I Win in the All-Star Mile preferring to keep the gelding for sprint races at Flemington.
I Wish I Win sits on the third line of betting for the All-Star Mile, but Moody has the Group 1 sprint double of the Lightning Stakes (1000m) and Newmarket Handicap (1200m) in mind for the gelding he part-owns with New Zealand breeder Mark Chittick.
Moody said he would possibly need to push I Wish I Win too hard to have him ready for the All-Star Mile (1600m) at Moonee Valley on March 18 which would require a lead-up run in the Group 1 Futurity Stakes (1400m) at Sandown on February 25.
And Moody he finds his horses improve dramatically following a race down the Flemington straight.
“Rightly or wrongly, I’m going to run him in the Lightning and the Newmarket,” Moody said.
“He’ll have a couple of soft trials at home, with a bit of beach work and that will be the path he takes.
“I want to run him in the Newmarket. The Futurity is only two weeks before, so I didn’t want to go the Futurity, back to the Newmarket.
“With the Lightning, I’m not going there thinking we can beat Nature Strip and all those fast horses.
“But a nice horse like him, he can bowl along, pull a few lengths off them in the last 100 metres, but more importantly he’s had a look at the straight.
“Then he can go to the Newmarket, a dry track, with his turn of foot, I don’t think I’m kidding myself.”
Moody said if his plans of winning the Newmarket don’t come to fruition there was still plenty of options for the galloper during the autumn and winter.
“The flip side of it is, he’s a four-year-old gelding and if we learn nothing and fail, there’s no damage, because we’ve still got the Canterbury Stakes, the George Ryder, the Doncaster, the Queen Elizabeth,” Moody said.
“We know he’s at that level and to have him ready for the All-Star Mile, I’ve probably got to push him too hard to be there, but there’s a race for him every Saturday between the end of February and the end of July.”
