Producing Keysborough on the second-last day of his juvenile season was not how Hawkes Racing initially planned to launch the career of Black Caviar’s grandson.
Had all gone smoothly at Ballarat earlier this year, the colt out of Black Caviar’s first foal Oscietra would already have at least one run under his belt.
The son of I Am Invincible was favourite to win a 1000-metre 2YO Maiden in mid-March only to be a late scratching after playing up in the barrier.
Almost five months on, Keysborough is ready to return to the races and co-trainer Wayne Hawkes is confident there will be no repeat of those barrier antics, which he blamed on Keysborough being the first horse loaded, in the $130,000 Luna Hand Care Handicap (955m) at The Valley.
“He’d never done that before in his life and he’s never done it since,” Hawkes said.
“He went back and did barrier education and everything and he’s never had a problem. It was just (that he had) barrier one and he had no one else in there with him.”
Keysborough will start from barrier three in Saturday’s field of 10 with Craig Williams to ride.
He will be the first to race from a product of Black Caviar, the undefeated three-time Horse Of Year who won 15 Group 1 races.
Oscietra was the result of Black Caviar’s meeting with Exceed And Excel and she ran third at Flemington on debut and won two of her next three starts on country tracks before being retired after finishing down the track at Sandown in the March of her three-year-old season.
After Oscietra, Black Caviar had a colt by Sebring (Prince Of Caviar) before producing three fillies; Out Of Caviar (Snitzel), Ready For Caviar (More Than Ready) and Invincible Caviar (I Am Invincible).
She then had another colt, I Am Caviar (I Am Invincible), missed to the same sire and last year had a filly by Written Tycoon.
Keysborough, a mid-September foal, had two Flemington 800m jumpouts before his Ballarat false start and was given another on July 15, when he cruised to the line in third position under little riding.
“Hopefully they’ll jump and run hard and he’ll just sit off them and try and get the job done,” Hawkes said.
Oscietra returned to I Am Invincible after having Keysborough, producing another colt in 2020, had a colt by Churchill last year but won’t have a foal this year after missing to Street Boss.
