The Group 1 Australian Guineas (1600m) is the pie in the sky for Otago who backed up a dominant debut win at Bendigo with a narrow in at Flemington on Saturday, taking out a 3yo benchmark 70 over 1400m.
Backed into $1.75 with betting sites, Otago landed just behind the speed under Beau Mertens but had to dig deep to overhaul Valois ($7.50) by a head with initial race leader Very Sewreel ($5) a further head away in third, with six lengths back to the next horse.
Mick Price, who trains in partnership with Michael Kent Jnr, was hopeful Otago could stamp his Australian Guineas claim during the week.
“If he does win, I would think with two wins it will allow me to give him a breather and try and get him into the Australian Guineas,” Price said.
Owned by Roll The Dice Racing syndicate, Otago could now be aimed at the Guineas, which is set to be run on March 2nd at Flemington with Roll The Dice Racing director of racing and communications Steve Travaglia hopeful their $50,000 purchase could deliver Group One glory.
“I’ll leave that up to Mick and Junior, you’d love to think so but he’s obviously still got a fair bit of learning to go, he switches on and off, Beau (Mertens) had his hands full for a little bit there. Dream, I think so, but we’ll see what happens,” Travaglia said.
Beau Mertens has ridden Otago in both wins to date and believes there is plenty more to come from the Ocean Park gelding as he continues to mature.
“He’s still a raw horse. Coming into the straight I gave him a little bit of a niggle and those horses in front of me kicked into the straight quite nicely… I sort of got to them and struggled to fight them off, he probably had a bit of a think about it,” Mertens said.
“He’s got ability this horse. I really, really like him and I think as he matures he’ll only get better.”
