Stablemates Delicacy and Neverland have dominated discussions in the lead-up to Saturday’s $400,000 Perth Cup, but the west’s leading trainer Adam Durrant said that the Group 2 event was hardly a two-horse race.
‘’I’ve got three really good chances in the race, including Real Love, who led and won the race last year,’’ Durrant said on Racing.com’s Racing Ahead on RSN.
‘’She was terribly unlucky behind the favourite Delicacy last start and if Real Love doesn’t finish in the first three, I’ll be really disappointed.’’
Durrant saddles Real Love, Respondent and Tower Of Lonhro in the race, but concedes that the race favourite Delicacy must rate as the horse to beat.
The trainer weighed into the raging debate over whether the state’s leading rider William Pike should have stuck with Delicacy as his Cup mount instead of stablemate Neverland.
‘’He’s as good a rider as anyone in Australia – he would measure up anywhere and he’s a very good judge.
‘’But I think 59 (kilograms) is a huge steadier for a horse. A couple of years ago, I tried to do it with Mr Moet and he couldn’t run through the line with 59 and then he came to Melbourne and was very unlucky behind All Too Hard and his runs in the Australian Cup and in the lead-ups to the Australian Cup were outstanding.
‘’So if you draw a line through that form and through the ability level of the horse, it’s a big ask for a horse and he (Mr Moet)( was a big, strong gelding and he wasn’t able to do it.’’
Durrant said his Victoria Derby placegetter Kia Ora Koutou had only returned to his stables today after throwing off an untimely leg injury that stopped his sale to Hong Kong.
The trainer said Kia Ora Koutou would be set for either the WATC Derby in March or the SA Derby in Adelaide in May.