The very smart, eleven-time winner Watch Me Rock will race outside of Western Australia for the first time when he tests his mettle in a highly competitive edition of the Group 1, $750 000 Futurity Stakes at Caulfield on Saturday.
Watch Me Rock already has a Group 1 win behind his name, having saluted in the Railway Stakes at Ascot in November. He then finished a close-up second in the Group 1 Northerly Stakes in his next start when moving from the 1600m trip of the railway to 1800m. The 1800m is the longest distance that Watch Me Rock has taken on to date, and he has a win over the distance to his credit.
Watch Me Rock will be first-up on Saturday (his last start was on December 6 in the Northerly) and he comes back all the way to 1400m when racing fresh in his first assignment on the East Coast.
He will also be having his first start for trainer Mark Walker. All twenty of his career starts to date have been under the care of the Grant and Alana Williams training partnership who currently are embroiled in a battle with stewards following the finding of a positive swab.
When stewards stood down Team Williams from training (they have now been reinstated pending an appeal hearing), Watch Me Rock transferred to the stable of Donna Riordan who trialled Watch Me Rock on two occasions at the Lark Hill training centre in Western Australia, the last being as recently as February 9 … a trial which Watch Me Rock won.
With the likes of, amongst others, the returning Treasurethe Moment This (the Group 1 Memsie winner), and the Cox Plate runner-up Buckeroo in the race, this will undoubtedly be Watch Me Rock’s biggest test to date, although his performance would also have to be judged with regard to other races over more ground that is likely to be on the agenda for him moving forward.
Worth noting is the fact that Willie Pike, who has been in the saddle in seventeen of Watch Me Rock’s twenty runs has followed the well performed son of Awesome Rock from east to west to maintain the jockey / horse association that has worked so well in the past.
Just as interesting is the fact that Watch Me Rock is Pike’s only ride for the day.
