BOOM three-year-old Dunkel – three city starts for three city wins, in a four-race career – has got Group 1 glory in his sights and Swan Hill jockey Harry Coffey will be happy to go along for the ride.
On Saturday Coffey overcame the horse’s slow start and several tries to get a run to take out the $150,000 Stud & Stable Awards over 2000m at Flemington.
Coffey has been on the horse for its wins at The Valley, Sandown and now headquarters.
And according to trainer Patrick Payne, the only decision they are facing with the horse’s next start is which Group 1 derby to target – the Australian, South Australian or Queensland.Originally Payne had the listed Tasmanian Derby in mind (which he won last year with The Nephew), but with every Dunkel win the goal gets correspondingly more ambitious.
Dunkel certainly has the pedigree to match. New Zealand bred, his sire Dundeel finished with more than $5.3 million in prizemoney and a swag of Group 1 wins.
The only Group 1 on Coffey’s resume is the 2018 Australasian Oaks at Morphettville, so he is always hungry for another one.
On Saturday Dunkel was sent out as the almost unbackable odds-on favourite – and then proceeded to miss the start.
Leaving Coffey no option but to patiently tag along with another 1800m – or so – to think about the next move.
“He’s obviously got really nice ability and he’s a stayer that’s on the rise, but he’s just doing little things that make him very hard to watch,” Coffey conceded post-race.
“Every time I have ridden him, I think we will be working towards ironing some of them out, but today was no different to his win at Sandown, he missed the start, was a tad disinterested and then, about the 600m mark, he gained a bit of motivation and got the job done.
“He’s a horse that’s going the right way and when he does sort of work things out, he’s going to be even better.”
A big call for a horse with three metro wins (and a second at Cranbourne) in his four-start career, but if he can recover and win as well as he did at the weekend, imagine his potential in a race where everything goes right.
“After the slow start I just thought I would blend with the race and work my way towards the outside,” Coffey said.
“But the way the race was shaping, with other horses all wanting to do the same … they were starting to move really early and it was all opening up,” he says.
“So even with the big weight I knew he has a better turn of foot than most and if a slight gap opened, I might be able to take it and that’s what happened.
“There was a little bit of a bump on the way through, and he lost a tad of momentum, but I didn’t fully put him under pressure, I just let him regain his confidence and his stride and he got the job done.
“He might have looked tough, but he was still soft in the last 50m, so he’s a lovely horse and it’s amazing how well he pulled up. He’s very clean-winded and Patrick and his team have done a good job with him.”
