Trent Busuttin and Natalie Young are maintaining a conservative approach with rejuvenated gelding Immediacy (NZ) (Tarzino).
The four-year-old son of Tarzino runs in this Saturday’s Gr.3 Chairman’s Handicap (2000m) at Doomben in preference to the Gr.1 Doomben Cup (2000m) a week later.
Immediacy has comfortably won his past two starts, taking his record to five wins from 12 starts, and is among the early nominations for Saturday week’s weight-for-age $1 million event over 2000m, which Busuttin felt was just a little bit out of reach for this stage of his career.
“The reality is he’s probably not a Group One horse – he’s a Group Three, fringe-Group Two horse – so you’ve got to put them in the right races,” Busuttin said.
“If he runs in the Doomben Cup he’s carrying weight-for-age against a horse like Antino, so we’d be happy to win a Group 3 race rather than go around and run fifth or sixth in a Doomben Cup.
“We’re just trying to win some races and pick up some prizemoney away from the better horses.”
Immediacy has drawn barrier two in the field of 14 and will carry 58kg with Mark Zahra to ride with Doomben currently a Heavy8.
Busuttin was keen on Immediacy’s chances but was surprised to see highly-credentialed import Sir Delius among the acceptors.
“I was confident and then I was just having a look through the nominations and saw Gai (Waterhouse) had one in there that its last start was in the Arc de Trompe (Gr.1, 2400m) and before that, it had won a Group One in France.
“So that pulled me up a bit. But it will be interesting anyway.”
Busuttin is hopeful Immediacy will handle the rain-affected conditions in Queensland.
“Because of his breeding, you’d assume he’d enjoy a wet track, but all of his wins have been on top of the ground,” he said.
“I don’t think it’ll worry him, but again, we’ll find out.
“At the moment he is a Group Three horse and hopefully he can get to Group Two level. We will steer away from those top horses and if he goes well we might look at the Q22 (Gr.2, 2000m) on Stradbroke Day.”