Dual Group 2 winner Time For War has a Group 1 race in his sights – trainer Gerald Ryan and managing owner Scott Darby just have to work out which race to target.
Scott rates the colt a fifty-fifty chance of running in the $500,000 J.J. Atkins G1 at Eagle Farm, after his all-the-way win in Saturday’s Sires’ Produce S. G2 at Doomben. “He carved out some good sectionals and Tye said he was actually playing with them in the straight, but he perked up when Brazen Beau came at him.”
Given that fillies have won every Australian Group 1 2YO race already run this season, the talented son of Snitzel could be the year’s champion 2YO colt if he can extend his speed to the 1600 metres of the Atkins.
There are good reasons to be confident that Time For War will get the longer distance. Snitzel is already the sire of two Group 1 winners at 1600 metres, Shamus Award (Australian Guineas) and Sizzling, who won the 2012 Atkins when it was known as the T.J. Smith Stakes.
Time For War’s dam Lady Zabelia is by the great source of high-class stamina, Zabeel, from the family which produced Zabeel’s champion son Might And Power, whose wins beyond 1600 metres included the Cox Plate and the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups.
However, Gerald Ryan has his eye on next season’s first Group 1 race for 3YOs, the 1400-metre Golden Rose in September. That would require the colt to head for the spelling paddock immediately and miss the Atkins.
Scott Darby spotted Time For War in the Arrowfield draft at last year’s Inglis Scone Yearling Sale. “I have a very good rapport with the Arrowfield team and they paraded four or five horses for me. He was the second one out and my first comment was, “What is he doing here?’
“There was just something about him, and I rated him one of the nicer yearlings we bought that year, with good scope and a great pedigree. He looked every bit a Snitzel to me.”
Scott secured the colt for $56,000 , the second-highest price of the Sale. Little more than 12 months later Time For War, with two Group 2 victories in his first five starts and almost $400,000 prizemoney, is worth a substantial multiple of that figure.
Darby Racing, also the original buyer of Group 1 winner Snitzerland, is syndicating three fillies by Snitzel this year, one of them also out of a Zabeel mare, the multiple city winner Zacushla.
