TRAINER Danny O'Brien has a head start on his rivals in the race to win the Australian Cup at Flemington in March with his quality stayer Vigor, who is likely to run first-up in Saturday's $200,000 Standish Handicap at Flemington, reports The Age.It says: O'Brien said yesterday he hoped to turn the negative situation of having to abort Vigor's spring campaign into a positive by him being the first group 1 galloper to kick off his autumn campaign on the first day of the new year. ''It was a bit d
TRAINER Danny O'Brien has a head start on his rivals in the race to win the Australian Cup at Flemington in March with his quality stayer Vigor, who is likely to run first-up in Saturday's $200,000 Standish Handicap at Flemington, reports The Age.
It says: O'Brien said yesterday he hoped to turn the negative situation of having to abort Vigor's spring campaign into a positive by him being the first group 1 galloper to kick off his autumn campaign on the first day of the new year.
''It was a bit disappointing that we had to abort the spring with him but the flip-side of missing the spring of course is that you get to the paddock a lot earlier than the others ... so we've got a bit of a head start on them in the autumn,'' he said.
Despite winning eight of his 26 starts, Vigor is probably unlucky not to have earned more than $935,955 in prizemoney. In the spring of 2009 he ran third in the Caulfield Cup but missed, by one spot, a place in the Melbourne Cup field for which he was one of the top fancies. Vigor's luck did not improve last spring. After running third behind Shocking and Heart Of Dreams in the Makybe Diva Stakes, he suffered back problems and a respiratory infection that ended his campaign in the first week of October. Although Vigor has not won at less than 1500 metres, O'Brien is expecting an encouraging run from Vigor, who will be ridden by Steven Arnold in the group 3 sprint.