DUNGIVEN was the find of last year’s picnic season, winning at all three legs of the Golden Triangle before scoring at Wean and Mungindi – an impressive five-win sweep on five different tracks.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Yesterday he received 57kg for this Saturday’s $6000 Pacific National Chopper Cup (1400m) at Moree, with Deepwater Cup winner Sambora (Karen Fox) top weight with 61.5kg.
He may well be one of three starters from the father and son training team – Peter and Nathan Sinclair – in the feature race.
The Moree trainers have nominated Dungiven and Booked Out (Peter Sinclair) as well as Playa (Nathan Sinclair) in the Chopper Cup, a race that had been the Moree Cotton Cup for many years.
Dungiven, a winner at Goondiwindi on Australia Day, produced a rattling run at Walcha recently to finish second behind Paddy Cunningham’s Hula Girl.
“I’ve always thought that Dungiven was just a non-TAB horse but he proved the other day (at Walcha) that he’s capable of winning a TAB race,” Peter Sinclair said.
However, Sinclair says stablemate Booked Out – having just his second attempt at 1400m on Saturday – has been somewhat disappointing since transferring to Moree nearly two years ago.
“His run at Goondiwindi was a pass-mark. It was on a soft track and I think he’s basically a soft-track horse – I hope we get that at Moree but I doubt we will,” Sinclair said.
“We’ll send him around in the Chopper Cup and see if distance can improve him.”
Nathan Sinclair was buoyed by Playa’s first-up fifth at Walcha behind all-the-way winner Aussie Kim.
The nine-year-old was coming off a long spell after stringing together a sequence of placings in all three cups on last year’s Golden Triangle – all of them behind Sinclair senior’s triple-crown winner, Tapakeg.
Nathan now fears that Dungiven could be the next “Tapakeg” when the north-western picnic season kicks off in May.
“Dungiven will be hard to beat (on Saturday) as well as on the Golden Triangle. At the moment he’s got a fitness edge on Playa but the distance will suit us,” Nathan said.
“Playa has been going good and I was very happy with his run (at Walcha) the other day – that will help him, going into the race at Moree.
“He really needed more time than what we gave him, but to get to the races that we want to run him in he needed to start early,” he said.
“He pulled up good (after Walcha) and is feeling really well within himself.
“Some days he’ll jump around and buck when he comes out of the stables and that’s really good for his age – he’s getting on a bit now,” he said.
