\u201cWe are really happy with them,\u201d he told the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe main players, the big names like Akuta and Oscar [Bonavena] are in really good places and most of the young ones are too.\u201d\u2028<\/p>\n
So pleased is Purdon he is confident he can drive both Akuta, who starts off 25m in the handicap pace and Oscar Bonavena, who is on a 20m handicap in the open trot, aggressively.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, it depends on the race tempo but I wouldn\u2019t be scared to make a move on Akuta,\u201d explains Purdon.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is a horse who can do some work and he is ready to do that this week if the race pans pan out that way.\u201d <\/p>\n
That makes him the horse to beat in a small field, with Republican Party the obvious danger but possibly still on the way up, whereas Akuta has had four races this campaign.<\/p>\n
Oscar Bonavena was stunning winning on the grass at Banks Peninsula last start but faces the double challenge of a 20m back mark over 2000m and his arch rivals Bet N Win and Muscle Mountain standing right alongside him.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuck will play a part but he is in a really good place and I wouldn\u2019t be scared to do some work on him even though he is best when driven for speed,\u201d says Purdon.<\/p>\n
Purdon is also talking unusually tough with Rubira from barrier 1 in a red hot Flying Stakes for the three-year-old pacers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to stay in front on him,\u201d he offers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he has more gate speed than Got The Chocolates and the only other horse I could consider trailing is Marketplace but if we handed the lead to him and he didn\u2019t cop any pressure, I don\u2019t think we\u2019d catch him.\u201d <\/p>\n
The father-and-son training combination have three reps in the $150,000 NZBS Harness Million for two-year-old pacing fillies and Purdon opts for Shezsofast as their best hope.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll the fillies are well but River (No.1) is the one who has really thrived since getting down here so she could be the improver.\u201d <\/p>\n
The champion trainer also finds himself in the rare position of having two outside drives on favourites tonight in Midnight Diamond (R1, No.6) and Arafura in the three-year-old fillies pace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been really impressed by Midnight Diamond, she is a good strong trotter while Arafura was excellent late last start and will be hard to beat, although her stablemate Winelight will be a big danger.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Purdons have expensive last start flop Special Occasion in tonight\u2019s $200,000 Harness Million for the juvenile boys but he meets a deep field headlined by the unbeaten Jumal and the impressive pair of Zeus Lightning and Allamericanplayer in what will be the definitive juvenile race of the season so far.<\/p>\n
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the <\/b>Herald<\/b> as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the <\/b>Herald\u2019s<\/b> Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe are really happy with them,\u201d he told the Herald. \u201cThe main players, the big names like Akuta…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486109,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[160806,6475,15978,24891,134520,3576,102739,160803,64703,15982,7743,138070,160804,7482,160805,160417,1071,14835,79,9989,21423,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-486108","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-addingtons","9":"tag-announcement","10":"tag-champion","11":"tag-confidence","12":"tag-confident","13":"tag-for","14":"tag-heading","15":"tag-horseman","16":"tag-huge","17":"tag-mark","18":"tag-meeting","19":"tag-mega","20":"tag-oozing","21":"tag-public","22":"tag-punters","23":"tag-purdon","24":"tag-racing","25":"tag-service","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-this","28":"tag-tonight","29":"tag-uk","30":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115345199235289910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486108\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}