Eagles Crag is set to begin a spring campaign that could take him all the way to the Cox Plate.
The northern hemisphere-bed son of Fastnet Rock has only raced three times in his life but has indicated in his two Australian performances that he is well above average and OTI Racing’s Terry Henderson said the time has come to find out just good he can be.
“We are nominating him for the Cox Plate and he’s ready to step out over the next week,” he said.
“I think he’s starting off over a mile. There are not set races after that as we just want to see him come back and run well and win at the class he’ll be in – it will be in benchmark class – and if he can do that, we can start to pick out some nice races.
“We’d probably keep him in the quality races. I think he’s one of those horses that runs better the tougher the races he contests.”
Henderson said Eagles Crag was showing the right signs on the eve of his return to racing after recording his two wins in Australia at Pakenham and Sandown over the summer months.
“He trialed the other day and went really well. We had these fake trials for country trainers over the past week to get some work into them and he went to Warracknabeal with a few of Archie’s (Alexander) and we were very happy with him.”
Henderson confirmed Eagles Crag will be among the nominations for the $5 million Cox Plate at the close of entries at noon on Tuesday.
“We are hoping he can go the whole way, but it will be interesting to see what he can do this spring,” he said.
This article was written by Andrew Eddy for Racing.com and can be viewed in its original form here.