Fire Attack wins the Gr 1 HKJC Premier’s Champion Challenge (JC Photos)
The Highveld Horse Of The Season Fire Attack will avoid the Gr 1 Betway Summer Cup and will instead take on the best in Cape Town, while his Alec Laird-trained stablemate Atticus Finch will be out to defend his Summer Cup crown.
Alec said about the Gr 1 Premier’s Champions Challenge winner Fire Attack, “Off his 126 rating we just think he must go for the weight for age races at this stage. In the Summer Cup there is only a 6kg spread from top to bottom, but I think it will just take it out of him. He will run his guts out carrying topweight over 2000m at Turffontein. So we are going to have to take on the best horses in the country and will have to take on two of the best (Eight On Eighteen and The Real Prince) in their hometown. It makes it a bit tougher that it’s in their hometown, but we will go for glory. If we run second or third it will be a good run and there will be no skin off our noses.”
Fire Attack faced some of the best in his last start when finishing a running on 2,35 length fourth behind Gladatorian, The Real Prince and See It Again in the Gr 1 HKJC Champions Cup over 1800m.
However, the race did not pan out too well for him.
He had to be dropped out to last in the seven horse field and there was some time wasted before he could be committed.
Alec said, “The horse in front of him, Son Of Raj, didn’t know which way he wanted to go, left or right. I think Richard wanted to go handier, but he obviously didn’t know whether to go left or right (due to the horse in front of him not committing either way). So he was at the back of the field and eventually he went for a run down the inside. For his first time at Greyville I thought it was a decent run. He hadn’t seen the course before and he made up ground. He did have an interrupted program too. It gave us hope he could go to Cape Town. All being well he will have a proper program for his campaign in Cape Town. There is only one prep run I could find for him in Jo’Burg before he goes, it is an 1160m Pinnacle event on November 9 on Victory Moon day. He is eligible to travel to the Cape after that and will stay with Eric Sands. Eric has helped me in the past with London News and Smart Call and others. He has always been a big help.”
He continued, “There is a classic program for the horses going for the Met. It is the Green Point first and then the L’Ormarins King’s Plate. We’ll take stock after those two races. It will be the same program for Eight On Eighteen, The Real Prince and Gladatorian. May the best horse win or the one who is well at the time. When you say ‘I am not going to go because I can’t beat this one or that one’, then come the race something could happen, for example, to Eight On Eighteen, and then you are sitting here and saying, ‘Oh dear’. So we are taking our chances.”
London News was expected to win the Queen’s Plate and the Met in 1997 and started 33/10 second favourite and 16/10 favourite respectively.
However, Smart Call was backed in from 40/1 to 8/1 and beat the like of Legal Eagle, Captain America, Futura, Legislate and other Gr 1 winners to land Alec a second Met in 2016.
Meanwhile, Summer Cup reigning champion Atticus Finch has been treated and has recovered from the epistaxis he suffered in the Hollywoodbets Durban July.
Alec said he had been “flourishing” and will take the same route in to the Summer Cup as he did last year.
Last season the now six-year-old Master Of My Fate gelding ran in a Pinnacle Stakes event over 1600m on October 12, where he finished third, before having his final Summer Cup preparation race in the Gr 3 Betway Victory Moon Stakes on November 11 three weeks before the Summer Cup and he also finished third in that race.
Another interesting horse in the Laird yard is Gr 2 Gauteng Guineas winner, the Ideal World gelding Parisian Walkway.
Alec said, “I think we found out what was slowing him down. He had a very resistant worm we found in his stool and I think we have eventually got rid of it.”
Alec feels Parisian Walkway is too high in the handicap on 119 when looking at the rest of the Guineas’ fields merit ratings today and he questions whether the correct line horse was used on the day i.e. Bacchus, who was rated 101 and Parisian Walkway beat by him by close to ten lengths. However, he is hoping Parisian Walkway bounces back to his Guineas form. He is running in a Graduation Plate on Saturday that he is weighted to win.
