Melbourne Cup winning trainers\u00a0John Symons and Sheila Laxon\u00a0can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.<\/p>\n
The training partners have endured a tough 12 months with\u00a0Knight\u2019s Choice\u00a0who has raced just four times since his 2024 Melbourne Cup victory.<\/p>\n
Firstly, a bout of strangles ruled the Cup winner out of defending his title\u00a0last year\u00a0while wet tracks in Queensland\u00a0during the\u00a0winter\u00a0dampened any hopes of Knight\u2019s Choice\u00a0returning to winning form.<\/p>\n
After some fine weather in Melbourne over the past few days, Knight\u2019s Choice was able to show a glimpse of his best form, winning a jump-out at Caulfield Heath on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
It prompted Symons to declare \u2018I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0seen him trial better than that\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t be happier with where he is at,\u201d Symons said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s\u00a0had a mixed way of life since he won the Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s\u00a0always had the ability to do it, (but he\u2019s a) wet track duffer,\u00a0(but)\u00a0dry track, like today, you see what he can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Symons said jockey Dylan Dunn reported Knight\u2019s Choice could have put the opposition away more easily than what he did.<\/p>\n
Knight\u2019s Choice will need to qualify to contest the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups this year having missed last year\u2019s spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree months we were locked up for,\u201d Symons said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u00a0couldn\u2019t\u00a0do anything with him, and he\u00a0actually got\u00a0strangles and was the last horse to get a clearance and he\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0get cleared until December.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s\u00a0back now, on all cylinders. We were happy with him up in Queensland, but it just kept on raining.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis work was compromised up there, but the good thing is\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0had that time away in the sun.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think\u00a0I\u2019ve\u00a0seen him trial better than that.\u00a0Dylan said he could have put them away easily, so\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0pretty happy\u00a0with where\u00a0we\u2019ve\u00a0got him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u00a0wouldn\u2019t\u00a0expect too much from his first couple of runs, but after that I would expect to see what he can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Symons said he and Laxon would head home and map out a program.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll\u00a0look for a mile race, wherever that may be, but it\u2019s\u00a0probably\u00a0got to be a quality handicap or a weight-for-age race,\u201d Symons said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve\u00a0entered him for the Caulfield\u00a0Cup,\u00a0and\u00a0we\u2019ll\u00a0probably\u00a0look to\u00a0take\u00a0a similar path as the one we took in the\u00a0year\u00a0he won\u00a0the Melbourne Cup.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Melbourne Cup winning trainers\u00a0John Symons and Sheila Laxon\u00a0can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75329,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[110580,110581,260,9440,110582],"class_list":["post-75328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-melbourne","tag-john-symons","tag-knights-choice","tag-melbourne","tag-melbourne-cup","tag-sheila-laxon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75328\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}