V75®: Dream post for Lugauer's lucky guy
Laradja Vrijthout could be the horse to lean against on this Saturday's V75® card - since he drew post one behind the gate for the fourth straight time.
"Lucky guy!" says trainer Conrad Lugauer.
Jägersro racetrack in Malmö is hosting V75® this week and the hometown trainer Conrad Lugauer has three interesting starters. He sounds positive on all three but 1 Laradja Vrijthout (V75-6) is the one who will get the most attention from the bettors. The seven-year-old has a good relationship with Lady Luck and from the inside post, it looks like he will go wire-to-wire, just like he has done in two of his last three starts. But two starts ago, he made a break behind the gate.
"I made a mistake at Åby. He's a very temperamental horse and to make a long story short, he was very difficult to handle when I got him in training and he has established himself very well here in Sweden and has come up with some fantastic efforts. You should never stop developing a horse and at Åby, I honestly thought it was a penalty kick without a goaltender so I wanted to be nice to the horse and warmed him up much slower. But the horse didn't react the way I thought he would. Quite the opposite. As we came up behind the car, he was full of energy and wanted to eat up the starting gate, hence the break" says Conrad Lugauer in the podcast 'V75 - lördag hela veckan'.
Before his last start, the warm up routine was changed back and he behaved perfectly and won in splendid isolation on the front end.
"He is a trotting machine who usually doesn't make breaks and as long as I do right by him it will turn out well"
"He will race super"
It is not only the post position that looks perfect for the Saturday start. The horse is also in top form according to his trainer.
"I think he will race super, based on two reasons. If we disregard the fact that I changed his warm up routine to make him more relaxed, he has three consecutive starts in his legs now, which is a big plus for him. Now he has the race speed in his legs to be able to go full speed the entire race. Plus, last week I trained him longer and more intensely. He did it great, had good numbers, his recovery heart rate was good and the workout was exactly the way I wanted it done. Everything worked out perfectly and he has recovered well, he is happy and alert so I think he is also in good shape mentally. He is somewhere in between crazy and lazy and that means that when I can let him trot at his own pace he becomes extra strong, when I don't have to fight him. When I can trust his strength, he usually trots very fast".
Looking at France
One of the races on the V75 card is a long-distance race over three kilometers where Conrad has entered 12 Manual Flight (V75-4), a horse who has raced mostly in short-distance races. Here he starts with a 40-meter handicap.
"Manual Flight (V75-4) is as big as a buffalo and he is strong, with a lot of ability, but he has so far never been able to take the lead on his own. But he has great strength and has trotted 1:12 over 2,000 meters and you can see that he is not much slower over 2,000 meters then over 1,600 meters. He is a very strong horse and I think that he will handle 3,000 meters very well" says Lugauer and continues:
"There is also a thought behind it. The owners are a group of very nice and hard-investing people who love horse racing. They always combine the excitement of their horses racing, with a trip and this could be a horse that we can take to Paris to race on a somewhat regular basis. I also think he is a horse that can race in long-distance races and therefore we decided to try him in this 3,000-meter race. In the middle of November, he has a race over 2,700 meters at Vincennes, open for four-year-olds and if he races well on Saturday, I might enter him there".
Good conditions in Diamantstoet
In this week's leg of Diamantstoet, the mares are spread out over three distances, where Conrad has post position two on the starting distance with 2 Debutante (V75-2). He is happy with that, even if the start is a bit of a worry.
"She could end up battling for the win if she just trots in the start, but two starts ago she started behaving a bit strange and over-sensitive in the start. She started behind the gate two starts ago and she surprised me, she has never acted that way before. She just made a break because she felt insecure. I then entered her in volt start, where she had a tricky post four and she made a break again, because she got too ambitious in the start".
"This time the post position means less stress for her, being that there are only three mares on that starting distance. It will be very interesting because if she trots in the start, she should be able to trot 1:14 over the distance and that's pretty good when you are on the starting distance".