3 minute read
It’s taken plenty of work by trainer Kylie Gavenlock to have Go For Gold’s confidence levels up enough to be as certain as you can be that he can adapt to a last minute jockey change ahead of Saturday’s inaugural Midway Handicap (1100m) at Rosehill.
The five-year-old arrived at Gavenlock's stable as a very nervous horse as a result of suffering a bad bout of heat stress after a race at Gosford in October 2019 but has managed to win three of his four starts for the Gosford trainer.
Go For Gold was one of 28 nominations for the first edition of the $100,000 Midway concept which is restricted to horses prepared by small and medium sized metro and provincial trainers.
Gavenlock said Go For Gold was going to be partnered by Andrew Gibbons, who has been on board in all four starts for her, but the Sydney lockdown and reinstatement of jockey zones means it's likely Jason Collett will take the ride.
"It's a shame we have had this business with the coronavirus and had to change jockeys,'' Kylie Gavenlock said.
"It's helped having the same jockey so he feels confident and they feel confident in him.
"He came to me with a lot of barrier issues so we've worked with the one jockey on him that knows him. At the last minute we've had to change that but hopefully now he's over being silly."
Formerly trained by Les Bridge, Go For Gold was city placed on debut, finishing not far off Haut Brion Her in a maiden, but collapsed after running fifth as an odds-on favourite at that last start before switching stables.
"The day he collapsed has really stayed with him,'' Gavenlock said.
"They didn't think he would come back to racing. He was terrified of going to the races, he associated that with the barriers and he would go off in the barriers.
"It's been a long journey and the owners have been patient, as you need to be with a horse like him."
The gelding rebounded quickly after a first-up failure, where he was caught wide, to score a tough on pace win on a heavy track at Gosford on June 10.
Gavenlock said the horse tends to race best when kept a little on the fresh side and is hoping for a bit of rain during the week to keep the Rosehill track in the soft, or worse, range.
"He's a horse if you backed him up you'd probably want 1200m or 1300m and I do like to give him time to completely get over his runs and go into every run as a new run,'' she said.
"I've got to keep him super fresh for the 1100m.
"It'll be interesting to see how strong a race it is. We're supposed to get some rain this week and I'll be happy if we get it."
