Leading trainer Peter Moody says Black Caviar has had a faultless preparation for Saturday's Lightning Stakes but a potential wet track looms as a bugbear for the unbeaten mare.The Flemington track was rated a dead (5) on Thursday after 29mm of rain overnight with more forecast on Friday and Saturday in the lead-up to the opener of the 2011 Global Sprint Challenge taking in nine Group One events in five countries.Black Caviar, making her first appearance for the year and after her ninth straight

Leading trainer Peter Moody says Black Caviar has had a faultless preparation for Saturday's Lightning Stakes but a potential wet track looms as a bugbear for the unbeaten mare.

The Flemington track was rated a dead (5) on Thursday after 29mm of rain overnight with more forecast on Friday and Saturday in the lead-up to the opener of the 2011 Global Sprint Challenge taking in nine Group One events in five countries.

Black Caviar, making her first appearance for the year and after her ninth straight win, hasn't raced on worse than a dead track.

"It wouldn't be an ideal scenario to be running on a genuinely wet track first-up," Moody said.

"Our mare has trialled in it, she's never raced in it. She's done a lot of trackwork in it, but I suppose until you're under race conditions you don't know.

"It's a great bit of trainer's insurance because if she happens to get beat you've got an excuse."

Moody retains a healthy respect for rival Hay List.

Gosford trainer John McNair has opted to again switch from winkers to blinkers for the Statue Of Liberty five-year-old who has won 12 of 15 starts including one of two on slow going.

Hay List hasn't raced since he obviously wasn't right when an 11-length sixth to Black Caviar in the Patinack Farm Classic (1200m) at Flemington last spring.

Before that race the Manikato Stakes winner had a run in with a concrete water trough in his paddock and the resulting leg injury required stitches.

"He's a very daunting horse. He's a monster," Moody said of Hay List.

"We saw him here in the early spring when he was at his top and he looked outstanding.

"There's no doubt in the world he wasn't at his top when we did meet him.

"He has the blinkers on and he's been wound up for a good while. He's been having exhibition gallops for the last four or five weeks so there is going to be no stone unturned there.

"It's an exciting clash and I would expect more of an exciting clash than the last time they met."

Nick Smith, recruiter for the Royal Ascot meeting in England in June, is in Melbourne and is targeting the likes of Lightning hotshots Black Caviar and Hay List and Newmarket contender Star Witness.

Moody said Black Caviar would stay home in Australia for the rest of the season trying to build on her solo Group One victory to date.

But Smith said he also had his eye on other horses who performed well in the Lightning, Oakleigh Plate and Newmarket Handicap.

"When Scenic Blast won the (2009) Lightning I'd never heard of him," he said.

The Dan Morton-trained Scenic Blast went on to win the Newmarket and the King's Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot and was later crowned Australia's Horse of the Year for 2008-09.

Black Caviar has firmed from her opening quote of $1.45 to $1.40 favouritism with TAB Sportsbet ahead of Hay List who has drifted from $4.40 to $5.

Reigning Golden Slipper winner Crystal Lily and comeback galloper King Pulse are best of the rest at $15.