The training partnership of Toby and Trent Edmonds will have a three-pronged attack in the Listed Sunshine Coast Cup on Saturday where Tyzone, The Harrovian and Hard Empire will carry the stable’s flag into battle.
Even with the numerical advantage the task of winning the race remains a challenging one for the stable as the Edmonds trio will be giving a weight to all of their rivals, who also, with the exception of one runner, are all younger than the three Edmonds trained eight-year-olds. On the plus side though, Tyzone, The Harrovian and Hard Empire all have reasonable draws, they all have form on the expected soft ground … and they are all capable over the Sunshine Coast Cup race distance of 1400m.
Tyzone will forever hold a soft spot in Toby Edmonds’ heart as he was the runner who handed the Edmonds team a Group 1 win when he took out the Stradbroke in June 2020 but, given the fact that the Stradbroke was Tyzone’s last win, the current question of whether Tyzone still has what it takes will get closer to an answer on Saturday.
“I think he has still got it,” said Toby Edmonds. “We’ll know more if he gets a fair surface on Saturday over a distance that he likes. It is hard to win with a big weight (60.5kg) like that, but he is working great. He eats well. He looks good … so we’ll see. Once we see that he doesn’t have the desire anymore we’ll make that decision then, but that is certainly not the case at the moment.”
‘As far as The Harrovian is concerned not much changes with him,” continued Edmonds. “What you see is what you get. He’s going well. He is always competitive.
“He’ll sort of sit up there just forward of midfield. He’ll look the winner at some stage, I am sure. It might just come down to whether the lighter weighted horses are a bit nippy for him in the closing stages. We are hoping that is not the case. There is not much you can do about it. He gets big weights all the time now.”
And what about Hard Empire, who will be fourth-up on Saturday?
“I thought his first run back was super,” said Edmonds.
In that first-up run Hard Empire finished fourth behind the very smart Zoustyle in the George Moore … a race Hard Empire had won the previous year.
“The second run (in the Falvelon) was plain I thought … second-up syndrome … and the other day (in the Magic Millions Cup) we just rode him out of his comfort zone. Ideally, he needs to be ridden a bit more patiently. Also, the track was quite firm on Magic Millions day.
“He’ll get a track to suit this week and I’m quite confident he can run better this weekend.”
*At the time of writing The Harrovian sits on the second line of betting at $4.20 (behind the $3.90 favourite Desert Lord). Hard Empire is at $15 while Tyzone is unwanted in the betting at $41.
