ROUND ONE of the cat and mouse battle between the tricky Kiwis and the Queensland bushies went as expected but beware the famous proverb ‘one swallow doesn’t make a summer’ or in this case a ‘spring’.
The odds were always stacked in favour of champion trainer Chris Waller and jockey James MacDonald when the best horse in the land Autumn Glow made her comeback against the heiress to her throne, Sheeza Alibi for Peter Moody and Luke Nolen.
Waller ensured he had the numbers to gang tackle the Group 1 Winx Stakes with half the field (seven of the 14) at acceptance time. But once he knew Moody was serious about dodging the Memsie Stakes in a fortnight at Caulfield with Sheeza Alibi he reverted to PLAN B.
Moody’s co-trainer Kath Coleman raised an issue that most were fearing but not prepared to say. Would that number of stable runners ensure that Sheeza Alibi ran into a major traffic jam trying to run Autumn Glow down?
That was arguably the furtherest thing from Waller’s mind reverting to his original plan of making it virtually impossible for Sheeza Alibi to win over the 1400m of the $1 million feature if he took the pace out of the race.
While the Sydney mainstream media was busy pumping up the tyres of their boy, Jmac and how much better he was than Luke Nolen as a top jockey, there was never any suggestion that the leading stable might be planning a surprise.
Close to scratching time on Saturday morning, Waller drives the nail into the Sheeza Alibi coffin scratching three of his seven runners, most specifically Beiwacht which was expected to inject the speed she needed to win the race.
Did he always plan to send Beiwacht to Melbourne for the Memsie and use the four-year-old, who was unbeaten over the track and distance, as a lure to get Moody to start? Only Waller knows.
Moody is no mug and nor is Nolen. Sure Jmac is a better jockey and ‘Sleepy’ has been known to miss the boat on occasions. But his association with unbeaten mare Black Caviar should at least earn him some respect and Brownie Points. As it turned out Luke did nothing wrong in the Winx nor did Jmac – on the day the better horse won.
One wonders though whether this was more a reconnaissance exercise by Moody to determine just how competitive Sheeza Alibi will be in her up-coming clashes with the champ. There was certainly no reason to be disappointed.
Raise the stakes to a mile race, inject some speed into it and racing might find that in the case of the superstar mare from Sydney ‘one swallow doesn’t make a spring’. Or where Sheeza Alibi is concerned ‘you have to lose a battle to win the war’.
