Dunkel, the rising star of summer three-year-olds, is the apple of Harry Coffey’s eye as they both headed to Tasmania this week and today’s Listed $125,000 Launceston Guineas over 2100m.
Coffey had an iron grip on the ride after being in the saddle for all four of Dunkel’s starts – for three wins and a second, including a runaway performance at Flemington for his most recent start.
Trainer Patrick Payne opted to overlook the Tasmanian Derby because Dunkel was better weighted in the Guineas, and he was confident the Launceston track layout would suit his charge.
“It looks a nice race for him and set weights looks ideal,” Payne said.
“I like him, we can’t get carried away being off-season but what I do like is he is very strong the last 100m, and it’s hard to find a horse like that.
“I always thought, early days, the Tassie Derby, but the Guineas he is ideally weighted and I reckon Launceston is a lovely layout of a track so we are keen to get down there.”
Nine horses have been nominated for the Launceston Guineas, including the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott-trained Soul Choice, which will have to turn the tables on Dunkel from their Flemington outing.
Payne says races such as the Alister Clark Stakes and South Australian Derby are on the agenda for the three-year-old, which was a $100,000 New Zealand Ready to Run purchase.
He reckons the only decision he is facing with the horse’s future starts 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 got 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.
“Every time I have ridden him, I think ‘we will be working towards ironing some of them out’, but Saturday 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.”
Coffey, who was riding in yesterday’s Hanging Rock Cup (which was not run until after The Guardian had gone to print) is taking good form to the Apple Isle. He was a winner at Great Western on Sunday and on Wednesday, at Warrnambool, booted home red-hot favourite, the imported British entire Zoom for the Maher-Eustace stable, a ride that could not have gone more to plan if they had tried.
After quickly – and easily – getting to the front on Wednesday, Coffey says from there on, “things worked out pretty well”.
He says the horses he had been following – although he respected them – meant he also “didn’t want to have to be caught behind them for too long”.
“When the opportunity arose for me to get out and get rolling into it I took that – but I took it without fully asking him, because he was 1600m up to 2300m, whatever the start is today,” Coffey added.
“It was a fair rise in distance and weight, but he got the job done.
“I think he’s a horse that will continue to improve with racing over here because, obviously, he’s an import and they tend to take a while to pick up what we are doing.
“Winning back to back in a new country isn’t easy and he also had to carry weight, and carrying weight can be very hard, especially when you’re carrying a lot of it.
“But he’s done that today, he’s got the job done and albeit it was a really nice run and we had a beautiful spot, I actually thought he wasn’t going to do it
“When I quickened him in the straight, I thought we were really going to put them away but it was almost as if he had got to the front and that he had the job done.
“But he’s still learning and he’ll be the better for it and the team can have some fun with him going forward.”
