The miracle that is Rothfire will be in action at Eagle Farm on Saturday where he will take on ten opponents in the Listed Lough Neagh Stakes.
The Rob Heathcote stable star will be giving away a weight and age advantage to all but one of his rivals (Rockribbed is also an eight-year-old), but his credentials cannot be questioned and he will go into race as the best performed runner in the line-up, but undoubtedly with work to do.
“If he turns up with his A Game … and, I suppose, some of that is down to me whether I have produced him well enough to do that … and Damien (Thornton) can give me the right ride …. now that we have drawn barrier three, then he is better than them,” said Heathcote.
“He is a bit of enigma to train because of what he went through earlier in his career (when suffering a catastrophic injury), but he is very well. We make sure to give him special attention and monitor his well-being at all times. I just love him.
“I’m happy with the horse. Ben (Thompson) rode him in a gallop for me on Tuesday … and he went faster than the work I wanted him to do on the course proper but, as Ben said when he came in, Rothfire is Rothfire. When he says, I’m having a gallop, he is having a gallop.
“You are not going to change his mind!”
Even at this late stage of his career, Rothfire reminded everybody just how capable a racehorse he is in his penultimate start when he landed the Group 3 Sydney Stakes in stunning fashion in a finish which highlighted not only his on-going ability, but his trademark steely determination which came through yet again in a highly pressurised finish.
His next start in the $3 million Russell Balding was disappointing on paper though, but Heathcote has no qualms about setting that result aside.
“Just ignore the run,” said Heathcote. “It was a sticky track. He never got in any sort of rhythm. Put a line through it.
“The horse has come back home,” continued Heathcote. “He trialled at Deagon the other day and he trialled super.
“I’m just so privileged to have got him to the age of eight. If you said to me when he was five or six that he would still be doing what he is doing at bis age, I would have said it would have been impossible.
“But here he is … happy and well … he endears himself to everyone in the stable.
“He is an absolute legend … an absolute gentleman of a horse.”
