Trainer John McNair has confirmed that Hay List will be nominated for the $1 million Newmarket Handicap with the defending champion a very real chance of resuming his racing career in the feature sprint.McNair said Hay List, who carried the highest Newmarket weight to victory in over 50 years when winning last year's edition with 58.5kg, would tackle this year's race first up if everything fell into place for the hulking sprinter."We'll nominate him for the Newmarket and if we can get him t
Trainer John McNair has confirmed that Hay List will be nominated for the $1 million Newmarket Handicap with the defending champion a very real chance of resuming his racing career in the feature sprint.
McNair said Hay List, who carried the highest Newmarket weight to victory in over 50 years when winning last year's edition with 58.5kg, would tackle this year's race first up if everything fell into place for the hulking sprinter.
"We'll nominate him for the Newmarket and if we can get him there then it it's a bonus for us and a bonus for everyone else," McNair said.
"I had originally only been thinking about the Lightning Stakes but with that three week gap between the Lightning and the Newmarket, although it doesn't sound like much, it really gives us that extra time to get him fit.
"He's on schedule. He will have at least one, if not two trials before he runs and we'll just see how the next five or six weeks go and what the field is like and then we'll work it out from there."
The seven year old son of Statue Of Liberty hasn't raced since finishing second behind Foxwedge in the Group 1 William Reid Stakes on March 23 last year after suffering a knee injury following emergency surgery for Colic in April.
Now fully recovered, McNair said Hay List was looking as well as he ever had ahead of his return to the racetrack.
"TVN were up here on Friday and our vet Brett Jones was there and he hadn't seen the horse for a couple of weeks and he just couldn't believe the difference in the horse. He just looks sensational," he said.
"How blessed are we in racing right now with Black Caviar and with him, they're just two excitement machines. Personally I'd just love for them to not meet for a while."
Though McNair would like to keep the two champion sprinters apart on the track for as long as possible, he couldn't prevent them from finishing one-two once again at the release of the 2012 World Thoroughbred Rankings (WTR) in London during the week.
Given a WTR rating of 125 for his brilliant Newmarket Handicap victory, Hay List was crowned the Champion 4YO And Up Male Sprinter, placing him as the second highest rated sprinter in the world behind only Black Caviar and equalling the rating assigned to Oasis Dream in 2003 and Rocket Man in 2011 as the highest given to any sprinter other than Black Caviar since 2002.
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