A Karaka Millions tilt is on the cards for Debutant Stakes winner Torture, with the unbeaten filly the potential headliner of a Lindsay Park team at the lucrative New Zealand meeting.
Will Hayes confirmed that the daughter of Sword Of State is on the cusp of a jump-out at Pakenham before a first-up assignment in the Geelong Diamond on January 3rd.
The $250,000 Karaka Book 1 purchase will run in the $1 million Karaka Millions 2YO Classic at Ellerslie second-up.
It’s been a decade since an Australian-trained horse won the juvenile feature.
“We’re looking at taking Torture over for the Karaka Millions which is exciting,” Hayes said.
“She was very good in the Debutant Stakes.”
“She’s going to have two trials at our Pakenham facility and if she goes well and trials as well as we think she will, we’ve got a race earmarked at Geelong.”
“Provided she runs well there, we’d look to fly her to New Zealand.”
“We do have a couple of other horses pigeonholed for other races on the day at Ellerslie but we just need them to perform (in their lead-up races).”
The Hayes brothers have become well accustomed to campaigning horses in New Zealand in the last 12 months.
Hello Romeo ran midfield in the Karaka Millions 2YO Classic in January, Here To Shock won the G1 BDC Sprint at Te Rapa in February and Evaporate ran second in the inaugural edition of the $3.5 million NZB Kiwi at Ellerslie in March.
“We’ve learned a lot in the last 12 months about traveling horses, not just to New Zealand but in general,” he said.
“We had Hello Romeo, Evaporate and Here To Shock in New Zealand and we obviously took Brightside over to Hong Kong.”
