Sunday’s Gr.3 Sandown Stakes (1500m) looms as a fork in the road for talented four-year-old Golden Path (NZ) (Belardo).
Trained by Mick Price and Michael Kent Jnr, the lightly raced gelding needs to measure up in the race if he’s to justify the lofty goals his stable has for him.
Golden Path will head into the Group Three feature second-up, after he was defeated as a short-priced favourite first-up over 1300m.
“He’s really come on since his first-up run,” Kent Jnr said.
“To be fair, we probably ran him over a trip short of his best and it just found him out; he kept closing hard. It was the ideal first-up run without winning and because of that, he’s really trained on the right way. We’re delighted with the way he’s moving, the way he’s galloping.
“This is sort of the race where we need to win, if not run very well, to get our rating up a fair bit and hopefully sneak into the Toorak.”
The younger member of the training partnership knows that Sunday’s task won’t be easy for Golden Path, as he’ll take on smart Queenslander Antino (NZ) (Redwood), who was desperately unlucky at Flemington last time.
“Being realistic, if Antino brings his best, he’s extremely hard to beat and I don’t see why he wouldn’t bring his best,” Kent Jnr said.
“He’s drawn to get a trouble-free run on a big, spacious track, he’s a very promising, progressive horse, who seems to win very regularly.
“He’ll be very, very hard to beat.”
Sportsbet has Antino at $1.65, while Golden Path is the third pick in their market at $5.50.
