It has often been said that a racehorse doesn’t know what its starting price is and sometimes it is also just as well that they can walk out, do their trackwork and racing and enjoy stable life without knowing the back-story of their career.
If that scenario did not apply, Alligator Blood’s head would be spinning.
After he abruptly left the David Vandyke stable and underwent surgery for a ‘kissing spine’, Alligator Blood’s future location and assignments have chopped and changed to a dizzying degree for a variety of reasons.
He was going to go to the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott stable for his comeback but, instead, he stayed with trainer Billy Healey, who had been looking after Alligator Blood in his recuperation, recovery and pre-training process … with a Magic Millions feature race on his radar.
With Alligator Blood not reaching the hoped for level of performance in three starts for Healey, the Magic Millions target was aborted after his unplaced run in the Lough Neagh on December 21, and the Gai Waterhouse / Adrian Bott option reinstated … with Alligator Blood then moving from Queensland to Sydney.
Again big races were being touted for the son of All Too Hard which, to some, was an optimistic show of confidence given that Alligator Blood had not saluted since his scintillating Group 1 win in the Australian Guineas back in February 2020 … but his connections were certainly not going to die wondering and, for his part, Alligator Blood fuelled that sense of expectation to some degree by trialling in good enough fashion twice for his new stable.
But, last week, just when Alligator Blood had been nominated for a return in the Group 2 Ajax Stakes … Alligator Blood’s co-owner Alan Endrezs was issued with a banning order from Racing New South Wales … from racing in that state … on a matter unrelated to his racing activities.
As a consequence of that determination, Alligator Blood will now return to Queensland and to Billy Healey, who will act in a supervisory capacity, but the gelding still be trained by Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott … and, yes, Alligator Blood’s sights have again swung around to find a new big race target … and this time it is the Stradbroke Handicap.
It’s like we have all been here before … three times it is now … and whether there can be any happy ending to this story remains to be seen, but there has to be real concern now that the longer Alligator Blood is short of match practise, the harder it will be for him to come back and find success against the best of the opposition who have been building their respective profiles in big race action while Alligator Blood has, for the most part, been marking time.
Alligator Blood carries a race record of nine wins from eighteen starts.
