Stavka Could Prove Something Special

The Sunday Age

Sunday July 6, 2008

Andrew Garvey

PETER Morgan has a reputation of getting the best out of unsound horses and the win of Stavka in the Terry Watson Handicap yesterday further enhanced his record, bringing up a winning double for the Whittlesea-based trainer after the win of Rumbird earlier in the day.

Six-year-old Stavka, a son of former top class sprinter Special, was having just his seventh career start in yesterday's 1200-metre dash up the straight and defied a betting drift from $3 to $4.80 to win most impressively.

Morgan pre-trained Stavka for Lee Freedman, who eventually decided it would be best to leave the horse with Morgan.

"Lee said, 'Oh he's a good vets' horse, he costs a fortune getting things fixed up, so you can see how you go with him'," Morgan said.

The horse had already had chips taken out of both knees and when further chips were discovered his owners sent him to a mixed horse sale, where David Moodie and clients of Morgan decided to give him a second chance.

"He's got knees rougher than my head," quipped Morgan, who says he has at times been ready to give up on the horse.

Stavka walks for an hour before he works and spends 20 minutes in the pool and then has bandaging and patching up, but with results like yesterday's Morgan is glad he has persevered.

With the horse pretty much a day-to-day proposition, Morgan doesn't make long-range plans for him, but feels he should run out a strong 1400 metres. "Perhaps we might even have a go at the Liston (1400 metres) or something like that."

The earlier win of Rumbird in The Banjo Patterson (2500 metres) brought up the first winner at Flemington since the 2004-05 season for heavyweight jockey Danny Brereton and encouraged his owners to dream of the Melbourne Cup.

Morgan doesn't share the owners' lofty aims but said he would enter him anyway. "I think he's got a nice staying race in him somewhere, perhaps a Winning Edge or Saab or the Bendigo Cup," he said.

? Trainer Peter Moody is hopeful that two-year-old Excelltastic, winner of the Cleandomain Handicap, might measure up to the better class staying races later in the year.

Moody thought the colt, a $120,000 yearling purchase, might have been looking for further than the 1400 metres of the race, but the $8 chance proved too strong over the final stages, to score a half-length win over the $2.80 favourite Georgia's Boy.

"He's a very nice horse. When he gets a chance as a three-year-old around a mile-and-a-quarter (2000 metres), mile-and-a-half (2400 metres), I think he will develop into a bit better than a winter horse," he said.

The win of Excelltastic adding to the growing reputation of his sire Exceed And Excel, who will comfortably take out the Australian first season sires' championship.

Excelltastic was his 13th individual winner in Australia and he has also had eight winners in England and one in South Africa.

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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