Baker/Forsman preparing for Melbourne

Thursday 10 August 2017, 5:28pm

Murray Baker has prepared more Australian Group One winners than any other New Zealand-based trainer and is gearing up to do it again.

He and his training partner Andrew Forsman won the NZ premiership and came away with both Classics at the Sydney autumn carnival with Jon Snow winning the Australian Derby and Bonneval the Oaks.

The stablemates are on the second line of Caulfield Cup betting with Rosehill Guineas winner, Gingernuts, another New Zealander, equal favourite with Hartnell and Humidor.

Forsman said the Cox Plate was unlikely for either Jon Snow or Bonneval.

"While Winx is around the Cox Plate is very much a back-up plan," Forsman told NZ Racing Desk.

Bonneval and Jon Snow are likely to be accompanied to Melbourne by Eleonora, Lizzie L'Amour and three-year- old Weather With You.

"It's a bit week to week at the moment with the wet weather," Forsman said. "They could fly out on either August 20 or 27.

"Bonneval is doing as well as she can and once she gets to Melbourne she will really improve.

"Jon Snow has strengthened up a lot. He has gone to another level. There's no reason he can't reach the heights of (2015 Caulfield Cup winner) Mongolian Khan.

"He is likely to resume in the Memsie Stakes.

"Bonneval will most likely kick off in the Dato Tan Chin Nam or the Makybe Diva the following week."

– 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 »