Australia Stakes option for Durendal

Monday 4 January 2016, 1:39pm

The transition to weight-for-age is the likely next step for Standish Handicap winner Durendal who capped a big New Year's Day for the in-form Mathew Ellerton and Simon Zahra stable.

Durendal's victory in Friday's 1200m-Group Three sprint at Flemington brought up four winners at the meeting for the training partnership and they added another in the opening race on Saturday at Moonee Valley with Heatherly.

Ellerton said Durendal would spend time at owner David Moodie's property until next week before his next step was locked in.

"He's going to have eight or nine days up at David's and we've just got to re-assess where we go with him. He's had a bit of racing and he's certainly not suffering from it," Ellerton told radio station RSN.

"We'll get him back down to Flemington next week and figure out where we head with him.

"He may well take his place in the Australia Stakes. That's a whole new ball game at weight-for-age for him."

The Australia Stakes is on January 23 at Moonee Valley.

Fellow four-year-old gelding Rough Justice made it two wins from as many starts this campaign with victory over 1000m on Friday.

The Listed Kensington Stakes (1000m) at Flemington at the end of the month is a target with his lead-up slated for Saturday week over the same course and distance in an open handicap.

Rough Justice had to bide his time between his first and second starts of the campaign with six weeks between the gelding's Moonee Valley win in November and his New Year's Day victory.

He was scheduled to run on December 19 at Flemington but the races were called off because of extreme heat.

Rough Justice's two wins this campaign have earned him a step up to open company.

"He's like Durendal, you throw out the challenge and he keeps going," Zahra said.

– 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 »