Trainer Joe Pride's grand campaigner Private Eye is no longer sprinting towards prizemoney top 10
Trainer Joe Pride has made the honest appraisal that Private Eye's days of contesting The Everest are behind him.
Private Eye, who is on the verge of breaking into the all-time top 10 prizemoney earners after his close third in the Stradbroke Handicap last Saturday, is a rising eight-year-old and Pride believes the gelding is looking for longer race distances now.
'I think his pure sprinting days are over, he is not as sharp as he used to be,'' Pride said.
'He's more of a 'miler' these days. It's funny because after he won the Queensland Guineas as a three-year-old Brenton Avdulla said we should push on to the Derby.
'But then he got faster and became a sprinter. It seems he's reverting to what he was as a younger horse.''
Private Eye won the Group 1 Epsom Handicap over the Randwick mile course as a four-year-old but then developed into one of the nation's best sprinters, contesting three successive The Everests for a second to Giga Kick in 2022, a third behind stablemate Think About It in 2023, then his close sixth to Bella Nipotina last year.
But Pride's evergreen equine star continues to be competitive at the highest level with his Stradbroke placing taking his career earnings to $12,217,185 and 11th on the prizemoney rankings, moving above Think About It ($12,163,050).
Private Eye will get his chance to break into the top 10 in spring with Pride looking at a possible return in the Group 1 $1 million Winx Stakes (1400m) at Royal Randwick on August 23.
'He won't have long off and I will have a think about the Missile Stakes (August 9) but maybe we go straight to the Winx Stakes fresh,'' Pride said.
'If he gets into the top 10 prizemoney earners, it will be a great achievement for the horse but it probably doesn't mean what it used to with the exaggerated levels of prizemoney these days.
'But he's done a great job during his career, he's been racing at Group level for five seasons now and is still holding his own.''
Pride said a race like the Group 1 $5 million King Charles III Stakes (1600m) at Royal Randwick on Everest Day, October 18, was a more likely spring goal for Private Eye.
This is also the target for stablemate Ceolwulf, who won the Epsom Handicap-King Charles Group 1 double over the famous Randwick mile course last spring.
Ceolwulf won the Neville Sellwood Stakes then was spelled after finishing fifth to champion Via Sistina in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes during autumn but is back in work at Pride's Warwick Farm stables and is also being readied for a comeback in the Winx Stakes.
Epsom winner Ceolwulf with a huge run wins the G1 King Charles III Stakes in front of a record crowd at Randwick! @PrideRacing | @SchofieldChad @aus_turf_club | @WorldPool pic.twitter.com/28oRVnurKS
— SKY Racing (@SkyRacingAU) October 19, 2024
'I'm really happy with how Ceolwulf spelled, he looks great,'' Pride said.
'At this stage we have either the King Charles or the Cox Plate as his main goal, I don't think he can run in both being just a week apart.
'That is one of the holes in the program because you want to see the best horses clashing.
'When I was getting into racing in the late 1980s, you watched Vo Rogue, Super Impose and Better Loosen Up racing against each other all the time because they were the only weight-for-age races.
'But these days there is so many choices and so many races to choose from for these top horses.''
Pride said there were various options for Ceolwulf including going to Melbourne later in the spring or staying in Sydney for an extended campaign.
'If Ceolwulf runs in the King Charles, then we have the option of going to Melbourne for either the Champions Mile or Champions Stakes, or he stays home and could even go to the Five Diamonds,'' Pride said.
Civic Stakes (1400m) with Accredited, Cool Jakey, Estadio Mestalla and Headley Grange.
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