David Hayes is yet to be excited by the trackwork from recent stable recruit Fireworks but is hoping the stakes-winning filly saves her best for race day.
Fireworks makes her debut for Hayes and co-trainer Tom Dabernig in Saturday’s Oneview Healthcare Handicap (1000m) and has barrier 12 in a field of 14 and two emergencies.
“I would describe her as a lazy worker,” Hayes said.
“I’m not excited by the way she works, but she is a winner of a Golden Slipper lead-up so she’s well-placed in a race like that.”
Fireworks raced eight times for her former trainer Gerald Ryan in Sydney, winning a Golden Slipper lead-up in the Group Three Widden Stakes in her third start in January 2015.
She followed it up with a Reisling Stakes placing before finishing unplaced in that year’s Golden Slipper.
The filly hasn’t started since her fourth in the Stan Fox Stakes last spring.
Hayes said Fireworks was transferred to trainer Peter Moody and then was later sent to his stable by owner John Camilleri.
Moody started a six-month suspension in March and closed his training business.
Hayes has eight horses accepted for the Moonee Valley meeting, including two-year-old Ocean Grove, but the trainer said he’s leaning to waiting to start the colt in a maiden over 1100m on at Geelong a couple of days later.
Ocean Grove showed Hayes enough talent for him to start him in the Blue Diamond Prelude on debut in February, in which the son of Fastnet Rock finished 12th of 13.
He is entered for Saturday’s Friends Of Epworth Handicap (1200m).
“I’m probably leaning to running him on the all weather track on Monday,” Hayes said.
Hayes believes Ocean Grove will be at his best over a mile and said he was aiming him at the spring.
“Like most of the Fastnet Rocks, they’ve got ability at two but he’s going to be really good at three, I think.”
