After a stuttering start to the Summer campaign which cost him a place in the Railway Stakes lineup, Cosmic Crusader is in with a great chance of rounding out the Pinnacles Summer Carnival at Ascot on Saturday by putting an exclamation mark behind his name in what would be a glorious turnaround in form and fortune.
Following those two disappointing efforts in the Asian Beau Stakes and the R J Peters Stakes in which Cosmic Crusader finished in third place as a beaten favourite at the restrictive odds of $1.40 and $1.80 respectively with bookies, the Michael Grantham trained five-year-old picked up his game and got back to his winning ways by landing the Listed Carbine Club Stakes on Railway Stakes day, the day of the big race he had originally targeted.
Two weeks later Cosmic Crusader cemented that return to form with a hard-fought win in the Northerly Stakes, claiming the Group 1 win he had been seeking in spirited fashion under a superb ride by his regular pilot Clint Johnston-Porter for the Peters Investment ownership group.
And the team is not finished yet … electing to give Cosmic Crusader a seven-day back-up with the focus now switching to this Saturday’s $1.5 million Gold Rush where Cosmic Crusader will come back from the 1800m trip of the Northerly to 1400m, the distance of the Carbine Club win the start before that.
This assignment is subject to Cosmic Crusader coming through the week well.
Cosmic Crusader will have plenty of tough opponents to deal with if he is to land the desired result though, which includes, amongst others, the Railway Stakes runner-up and third place finisher Overpass and Rey Magnerio, Western Empire, who placed in both the Railway Stakes and the Northerly, and Joker’s Grin who has won nine out of thirteen starts.
It is a big race with a big race field and the chances are it will again pan out as we’ve seen so often before this summer in the West … a highly competitive charge over the concluding stages with not much in it as the leaders cross the line.
