If racing was only about the best looking horses winning, Rain Affair would be an outsider – and not the warm favourite – to win the Missile Stakes.
Luckily for the Rain Affair camp racing doesn’t discriminate in this way, because despite his shortcomings on the score of attraction the sprinter is hot property with six wins in seven starts.
Rain Affair steps out for his most difficult contract so far in the Group Three Missile Stakes (1200m) at Randwick on Saturday with his astute young trainer Joe Pride confident the winning run will continue.
Pride mightn’t be able to make Rain Affair improve his rating on the scale of physical attraction but he knows he has been able to finetune his charge to the point where he is comfortable about sending his horse into a weight-for-age contest.
Go to Randwick on Saturday to see a thoroughbred with the movie star looks and you will be disappointed.
But if it’s a Group One winner-in-waiting you’re after, then Pride has got the horse for you.
“He’s a pretty common looking animal,” Pride said after watching Rain Affair gallop at Warwick Farm on Tuesday morning.
“Because he’s a decent horse people will say he’s nice but he’s not. There’s nothing about him that you can like on looks.”
If the Randwick parade ring comes with disappointment for equine fanciers over Rain Affair, Pride is hoping the Missile Stakes result confirms his suspicion about what he can’t see being the key to the sprinter’s brilliance.
“To me what’s on the inside is much more important … it’s their attitude but also just their cardiovascular system,” Pride said.
“It’s the most important ingredient. They can all run fast. It’s their ability to sustain that speed and that’s limited by factors like little hearts.
“That’s what he has got going for him. He’s got this massive big jowl and I’m tipping he’s got this massive big fuel tank down there and he can just run and keep running.”
Pride is coming off a season when he finished fourth in the Sydney trainers’ premiership with 54-1/2 winners and won Group One races in Sydney and Melbourne with mudlark mare Sacred Choice.
He has retired the 2009 Doncaster Mile winner Vision And Power but Sacred Choice returns in search of a wet spring and horses like Rain Affair and Neeson are being groomed for richer pickings.
Neeson is also a Missile runner but it’s all about Rain Affair and Pride makes a compelling case as to why the four-year-old can make a successful transition to weight-for-age racing.
Providing an insight into how he plies his trade, Pride said: “The easiest thing to do is train speed out of horses by excessively working them.
“I train them to keep it and it’s no coincidence that I’ve got a lot of fast horses that race on the pace.”
Rain Affair has left no doubt he has speed to burn and while he might be forever racing’s ugly duckling, for Pride there will be no better sight on Saturday than a plain-looking gelding passing the winning post first.
AAP TURF
