Sir Michael Stoute plays patient innings with Zacinto
Chris Gayle may have been the West Indian who battered India into submission in the World Twenty20 at the Kensington Oval this week but in Newmarket a Barbadian has become the master of the more patient approach.
Sir Michael Stoute sent out his first runners nearly 40 years and the cricket-loving trainer has learned how to construct an innings during the season, rather than simply thrash around wildly in the first few overs of spring.
The first Classics of the season passed without Stoute being involved but he has hardly been idle. On the contrary, Freemason Lodge has made a flying start, with an impressive 36% strike-rate by the yard’s Group runners.
This week will be an important one for Stoute as he tests the waters with his prospects for Epsom. He begins with what he himself admits is a speculative runner with Eleanora Duse in the Group Three Tattersalls Musidora Stakes at York on Wednesday, who is not entered for the Oaks.
However it is the next day that Stoute finally takes the wraps off his main hope for the Investec Derby when Workforce runs in the in the Group Two totesport.com Dante Stakes, which is shaping up to be the most informative of the Derby trials.
Workforce has been a colt who was making headlines despite only leaving his stable box to exercise on Newmarket heath. A six-length winner of a decent maiden at Goodwood last September, the word early in the year was that the colt did not figure in Derby plans. He was added at the April entry stage for £8,000 but has not been seen out this season with Stoute admitting that he has been slow to come to hand. “It has been a tough spring and it has suited some better than others,” he said recently.
The calendar told Stoute that Workforce's season needed to commence but his early gallops were equally eloquent in telling the trainer to be patient until the colt gave him the right signals because Stoute knows that Classic hopes can be built on the most brittle of foundations.
Zacinto never even made it as far as a Classic trial last year after an injury sustained in his last run as a two-year-old was compounded by a further setback in the spring. Stoute retired to the drawing board and returned with a revised plan for the autumn which appeared close to fruition when the colt ran Rip Van Winkle to one-and-a-quarter lengths in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot in September. But there may have been one or two sleepless nights after Zacinto was virtually pulled up in the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Santa Anita in November.
He just did not seem to handle the tight turns of the turf course but will have no such problems when he runs on the straight-mile track at Newbury on Saturday in the Group One totesport.com Lockinge Stakes, for which Paco Boy - the winner of the Sandown Mile last month - is the likely favourite. “He came back a little bit sore from Santa Anita but that didn’t take very long to clear up and we’ve always had the Lockinge as his starting point for this season,” Stoute said. “And the preparation has gone without a hitch, gone very smoothly.
“I think you’re always disadvantaged when you’re competing against something like Paco Boy, who’s already come out for the year, but he’s had a pretty fair preparation for this run.”
Stoute would be the first to admit that he has never really had a smooth run with Zacinto’s career but he is clearly one who the trainer has filed under unfinished business.
“He’s a horse we’ve always rated highly. He showed natural ability from an early stage as a two-year-old, he’s never run a bad race – except for the one at Santa Anita. There were excuses for that, so we don’t think he’s reached his full potential yet and we’re very hopeful this can be a good year for him.”
Those who would point out that Zacinto is rated 2lbs behind Paco Boy on official ratings are met with that trademark half-smile. “Well, it sounds as though we may be three-quarters behind him,” Stoute said, the last words engulfed by the sort of bellowing chuckle that suggests such thought are not uppermost in his mind and entries for the Queen Anne, Prince of Wales's and Eclipse Stakes give an indication of what he has mapped out.
Not that Stoute is giving much away; when it suits him he could give MI5 a run for their money in the secrecy stakes. “We’ve got to go to Newbury on Saturday, see how he performs there. I’ve always had a gut feeling that he’ll be very effective at a mile-and-a-quarter. So we’ve got that distance covered as well. We’ll make plans after Saturday’s race.”
A long innings looks the most likely one.
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