Unbeaten five-year-old Baraqiel aims to extend his winning streak to five in a row in a Benchmark 84 (1200m) at Flemington on Saturday.
“This weekend is definitely the test,” said Will Larkin, assistant trainer to Leon and Troy Corstens, to Racing.com.
“We threw a late nomination in for the Sir John Monash last week and we really put our thoughts together with (managing owner) Nathan (Bennett) and Troy and we just thought that it might just be too soon and we elected to go to this race, give him the extra week and test him down the straight.
“It’s still going to be a good field, but it’s going to help us put more of an insight into where we’re going to target him deeper into the spring.
“I would love to see him get a bit of cover – he’s just that natural and got that good gate speed that you don’t want to take it away from him … it would be nice to have a back to follow that can take him right into the race and that way, when he’s ready to extend away, he’s at his top gear and that way he’s not going to be doing things wrong.
“It’s obviously exciting when you’ve got a horse like that – he’s learning with each run and I think he’s got improvement still.
“We’ve just been taking him one run at a time, he is a five-year-old and he started his career late, but we’ve got to remember it’s his first preparation that he’s got to the races, so we don’t want to overtax him.”
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