Night's Watch recovers from lameness issue

Monday 24 September 2018, 3:41pm

Caulfield Cup second favourite Night's Watch is free of any lameness issues that may have derailed his spring campaign.

Night's Watch earned a ballot exemption into the Caulfield Cup with his win in Saturday's MRC Foundation Cup at Caulfield, but Racing Victoria stewards said the gelding had pulled up lame in a hind leg following the race.

Terry Henderson, director of OTI that part-owns Night's Watch, said the five-year-old had recovered on Sunday morning.

RV handicapper Greg Carpenter has penalised Night's Watch 1kg for the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups and he now has 52kg in both races.

"He's got a little quirky habit when he stretches out to have a pee," Henderson told RSN927.

"What that does is, it overstretches a muscle in his back and that was his issue after the race on Saturday and as a result of that he did walk out lame from the (swabbing) box.

"They took him back to Warrnambool and he trotted up perfectly fine on Sunday morning.

"He does have some chiropractic work every couple of weeks and he'll have that as he goes towards the Caulfield Stakes."

Night's Watch was promoted to the second line of betting at $8 following Saturday's win with his Darren Weir-trained stablemate Kings Will Dream the $4.50 favourite.

Henderson said a decision on whether Night's Watch runs in the Caulfield Cup on October 20 or the Cox Plate the following week would be made after he contests the Caulfield Stakes on October 13.

"The Caulfield Stakes is on the agenda and Weiry will make a decision after the Caulfield Stakes," Henderson said.

Carpenter elected not to penalise Miss Admiration following her win in the JRA Trophy at Rosehill, instead amending her benchmark, moving her to equal 49th in the Caulfield Cup ballot and to 53rd in the Melbourne Cup.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »