3 minute read

While he cost more than ten times the total amount of prize money awarded for his victory at Thoroughbred Park last weekend, Canberra based trainer Matthew Dale is delighted to see Rock Speed finally start to reach his potential.

A well bred son of Redoute's Choice out the Mannerism mare Mrs Post, Rock Speed was a $200,000 purchase from the 2010 Australian Easter Yearling Sale and despite showing a lot of potential early on he was unable to break his maiden status in his first preparation.

Continuing to remain patient it was not until June this year that he really started to hit his straps which was evident in his six length demolition of his rivals at Goulburn prior to a spell.

“He has always shown a good amount of ability it was just a case of mentally getting it out of him, he’s always had a bit of an attitude,” Dale said.

“We sent him to the paddock on a good confidence booster last preparation and he returned with a nice confident win.”

Sent out the easing $6.50 second favourite when resuming at Canberra last Sunday, Rock Speed proved far too good for his rivals when he successfully made the jump up in grade to score easily over the 1200m journey.

“He’s that sort of horse where you can never be too confident with him because at times in the past where we had been confident he had let us down,” Dale said.

“He’s now starting to show the raw ability he has always had.”

While Dale admits he has proven frustrating at times he feels it is not a surprise that he has taken his time to mature and progress as he has proven quite similar to his mother.

“I had a bit to do with his mother having trained her for her only two career starts, she always indicated she had a good amount of ability but did take a little bit of time so it’s not surprising this horse is starting to come good as a late three/four-year-old,” Dale said.

“He’s bred to be good but that doesn’t always mean they are, there are thousands of horses every year that are sold for a lot of money and simply can’t get out of their own way.

“He’s constantly improving and starting to realise his own ability.”

Dale said he now hopes to step the lightly raced four-year-old up in trip in the next coming months.

“These sort of horses that have been a fraction disappointing in getting there maximum ability out of them, you never like to make too big a call so it’s just good to see him heading in the right direction,” Dale said.

“At this stage we’ll just look to steadily progress him up in distance and try and stretch him out to 2000m this preparation.

“He’ll have a couple of runs down here in the country and obviously we'll reassess after each performance and if the right race was to present itself and he was going well enough we would head towards town.”