Craig Kerry
Queensland trainer Billy Healey knows it is a strange time of the year to be chasing a breakthrough Sydney winner, but he feels Cosmic Fire and Too Many Thoughts can bounce back in favourable conditions at Rosehill on Saturday.
Healey, who this year expanded his Sunshine Coast operation to take in the stables of retiring Mark Currie, has had three runners, without a placing, in Sydney across a decade of training.
“You’ve got to have ones good enough to go there and it’s a tough time of year to be having a go at it in Sydney, but that’s the way it’s worked out with them both,” Healey said.
Cosmic Fire, $10 (TAB) in the last, a 1200m benchmark 94, represents Healey’s best chance at the meeting. The five-year-old, a winner of the Sunlight Consolation and Queensland Day Stakes last year, finished last at his most recent start, at Doomben in an 1100m handicap, but he made up good ground when sixth before that when resuming in the Ramornie Handicap at Grafton.
Healey put the Doomben run down to second-up syndrome and believed he could hit back from gate three with Jason Collett aboard.
“Cosmic Fire is quite highly rated, so we had to go somewhere with him and it looked the right race to target,” he said.
“He was a bit plain the other day, but he can do that second-up. He’s done it a few times. He ran last in a Gold Coast Guineas then come out a month later and won the Queensland Day Stakes, so it’s not unusual.
“It was just the programming, why he ran in that Doomben race. Normally I wouldn’t go any less than three weeks or a month between runs with him, from first-up to second-up, and back to the 1110m probably didn’t suit, too.
“But he seems to have bounced back and his third-up record is really good. He’s got a good draw, good jockey, so he ticks a lot of boxes.
“It’s not any harder than a Ramornie, and that was a big run. He was drawn right off the track, and he got back and wide, and he hit the line good, so if he repeated that, with the draw he’s got, he’d have to be a hope.”
Healey said the Weetwood Handicap at Toowoomba in a month could be a next target for Cosmic Fire.
Too Many Thoughts ($34), a five-year-old formerly with Currie, was runner-up last start when favourite in an Eagle Farm midweek 1400m race. He steps up to a 1500m benchmark 78 on Saturday.
“It was a touch disappointing to the eye for him to get rolled last start, but his two runs before that were really good,” Healey said.
“The track was a little bit firm the other day and he’s a really big horse, and I wonder if he really appreciated it and let down as well on it.
“I’m interested to see him at 1500 and there’s a bit of rain around, so he should get a bit of give in the ground. He’s definitely going to be some sort of odds, but his form is around good enough horses to be competitive in that, although Waller’s [Mr Miller] looks one out of the box.”
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