Afterthought delivers G3 Gold Cup for Fabrizio

An afterthought for Fabrizio could parlay into a Brisbane winter campaign after his comfortable win in the Hawkesbury Cup.

It was a typical Gai Waterhouse front-running mile win as Jason Collett controlled the tempo and had a kick up his sleeve as he never looked seriously challenged in his three-quarters-of-a-length victory from Moher and Testashadow.

“He is a horse that has a comfort zone that is that little bit higher than his rivals,” Collett said. “I didn’t actually go for him until the 200m mark and he still had [a] really good kick. It was one of those wins where you really never felt like anything was going to get near you.”

Fabrizio was back on a good track for the first time since winning on Melbourne Cup day over 1800m at Flemington and lived up to the form that saw punters send him out a beaten favourite in the Epsom and Villiers Stakes last year.

On Saturday he was a $9 chance and for those that stuck with him there were few worries.

Collett jumped him to the front and got him rolling at comfortable sectionals for him, which stretched the field out and didn’t allow his rivals to match his turn of foot.

“He feels like he was doing it so easy and I think he is only going to get better when he gets up in a trip. He has done that before and I think he could win better races than this,” Collett said. “I was still sitting on him half down the straight and knew they were chasing hard and nothing was really coming at me. It is a funny feeling of comfort.”

Fabrizio had been one of the horses in the “trackwork horse swap”, which saw Waterhouse and Adrian Bott fined $5000 during the week. The horse had been sent back to the barrier trial after only beating one home when favourite at Randwick a couple of weeks ago.

This was a show of training feel by Waterhouse. Fabrizio failed on a wet track first-up but she looked at him a week ago and thought he was hitting his straps and coming into himself.

“We were never going to come to this race but I looked at him last week and said to Adrian ‘what about the Hawkesbury Cup with him’,” Waterhouse said.

“It was an absolute afterthought. He still had to trial because he had that ban on him, so he went there on Monday and passed and came here looking marvellous.

“He is just a much better horse on top of the ground and the firm going and a brilliant ride really helped.”

Collett is not a usual rider for Tulloch Lodge but Waterhouse gave credit to Bott for the booking.

“Adrian thought he would suit Fabrizio and he certainly did,” Waterhouse said. “He was able to rate him so well and you knew was going to have bit of a kick.

“They are the sort of horses I like to train because they are just tough. I think there are some 2000m races for him in Brisbane where he is going to be very hard to beat.”

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