Veight has some quality two-year-olds to contend with in Saturday’s Group 1 ATC Sires’ at Randwick, but father/son training team Tony and Calvin McEvoy are excited about the challenge.
What Calvin has seen from the colt since his brilliant win in the Victorian equivalent on March 11 has only enhanced his enthusiasm for his chances of becoming the first horse in more than 40 years to complete the VRC/ATC Sires’ double.
The majority of Veight’s work since the Group 2 VRC Sires’ Produce Stakes (1400m) has been clockwise and McEvoy is delighted with the way he has taken to it.
“Every day and he’s taken to that really nicely, which is very exciting,” McEvoy said when asked how often Veight had worked ‘the Sydney way’.
“He is in tremendous order, we’re very, very pleased with him, he hasn’t put a foot wrong and he’s come on.
“He’ll have his final bit of work early in the week and we head up there full of confidence.”
The son of Grunt will head to Sydney a winner of his only two starts, having strolled home by six lengths in a 1200m two-year-old maiden at Pakenham on debut before his two-length VRC Sires’ win.
Third in that race was James Cummings-trained gelding Amur, who won Saturday’s Group 3 Baillieu Stakes (1400m) at Randwick.
A VRC Sires’ winner has not won the ATC Sires’ since Full On Aces in 1981 with second placings to Grosvenor (1982) and All Too Hard (2012) the best results since.
Veight is one of the leading chances for Saturday’s 1400-metre event that is also likely to include Golden Slipper runner-up Cylinder, Blue Diamond Stakes second placegetter Don Corleone and Maharba, who was runner-up to subsequent Golden Slipper winner Shinzo in the Pago Pago Stakes.
