Team Hawkes and managing owners Aquis Farm will have a re-think on a Memsie Stakes start for Sesar after the short priced favourite was well beaten in last Saturday’s Group 3 $160,000 The Big Screen Company Bletchingly Stakes (1200m) at Caulfield.
Sesar, above, was a well beaten favourite in the Bletchingly Stakes at Caulfield. Photo by Steve Hart.
Sesar was sent out as the $2.15 favourite for the Bletchingly Stakes but after over-racing in the early and middle stages and then being pushed wide on the home turn, the Sebring colt failed to challenge the placegetters and wound up in sixth position, eight and a quarter lengths from the winner, Scales Of Justice.
Aquis Farm chief executive Shane McGrath had been thinking of the testing Sesar at Group 1 level in the $1m New Zealand Bloodstock Memsie Stakes (1400m) at Caulfield on August 31 but those plans are now up in the air.
“We had been planning on heading towards the Memsie, but we had obviously been expecting him to win on Saturday,” McGrath told Racenet.
“We have put a line through Saturday’s run and we go back to drawing board.”
“We have to regroup because that was meant to be a run to tell us where we were going into the spring.
“But it was the worst run of his career and you walk away totally inconclusive because if he had been beaten 1.5 lengths you might say he had reached his level.
“But to run so badly it doesn’t make anything clear.”
Co-trainer Wayne Hawkes said that Sesar’s tendency to over-race early may have contributed to his woeful performance and agreed that connections will have to think hard where they are going to go with colt in the upcoming Spring Carnival.
“He over-raced a little bit and got a little bit keen and may have had the Caulfield hoodoo first-time but we’ll go home and reset,” Wayne Hawkes said.
Sesar looked good at his first run for the Hawkes stable with a win in the $125,000 Winter Dash (1200m) at Randwick on June 22 but is now marked as a $21 chance for the Memsie Stakes at Ladbrokes.com.au.
Early betting for the 2019 Memsie Stakes at Ladbrokes.com.au: $3 Mystic Journey, $9 Alizee, Osborne Bulls, Pierata, $10 Happy Clapper, Vega Magic, $12 Avilius, $13 Hartnell. Te Akau Shark, $15 Brutal, $17 Trekking, $21 Cliff’s Edge, Fundamentalist, Humidor, Le Romain, Malaguerra, Mr Quickie, Sesar, $26 Pohutukawa, $31 Castlevecchio, $34 or better the rest.
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