For those on the outside, you can only watch, wait and hope like hell the phone rings at some stage.
Garry Frazer knows it's a long shot but a longshot is still better than no shot at all. Being told you're on standby for a $13 million race can actually be more nerve racking than being in it in the first place.
Waiting game: Sydney Stakes contender Spright is a reserve for The Everest.Credit:AAP
"You have no idea what will happen with The Everest," said Frazer, the trainer of last-start group 1 placegetter Spright.
His mare and stable star sits as one of five emergencies for The Everest. The sixth original reserve, Osborne Bulls, has already secured a spot in the race under the Australian Turf Club banner after his stablemate Home Of The Brave was withdrawn.
A wet track complicates matters. Some in The Everest field won't be suited by it but how do you give up a slot in the richest race in Australian history knowing you've got a fit and sound horse sitting at home in its box?
Spright, which will start one of the fancies in the Sydney Stakes, the consolation race for The Everest, surged into third behind Viddora and Brave Smash last start in the group 1 Moir Stakes. The top two have spots in The Everest.
Frazer, the canny Hawkesbury trainer, won't finally give up on joining them until the scratching deadline passes on Saturday morning.
Her run in Melbourne was outstanding and you would never have dreamed she could win at Moonee Valley over 1000 metres
"She's going great," Frazer said. "Her run in Melbourne was outstanding and you would never have dreamed she could win at Moonee Valley over 1000 metres, but another 50 more metres she could have done. She couldn't be better.
"[Jockey Damien Oliver] said, 'she went great and we finished as good, if not better than anything else in the race'. Another few strides would have been handy, but he insisted she was going great and there are a lot of good options for her in Melbourne."
Oliver will duck across the border to stay with Spright and has last year's The Everest runner-up Vega Magic as his trump card in the big one.
Spright's form on rain-affected going doesn't make for outstanding reading – she's only placed once in seven starts on soft and heavy tracks – but Frazer is buoyant about her handling an improving track in the soft range.
As an alternative, Spright might not race at all at Randwick on Saturday despite being an acceptor for the two big sprints.
"I was happy when the track was a [Soft] 7 [on Wednesday] and she did run well in a couple of races on rain-affected tracks," Frazer said.
"At the moment we're just sitting back and waiting to see how bad it gets or what happens in the next day or so. If she didn't race she could probably race next weekend in The Nivison.
"She's still in the Manikato and if we didn't run in that there's the Linlithgow, which is down the straight and I really think she would appreciate going down the straight … a horse like her that is so strong. We've got a few options."
But the main one, they're still waiting on.
Source: Read Full Article