Exciting pacer Alterior Motif is nearing a raceday return after his eye-catching 6-1/4 length debut victory at Cambridge Raceway in June.
His future looked set to be in Sydney after the victory, however, his sale fell through but that did not faze owner and co-trainer Andrew Neal.
“They wanted to see him race again. It (the sale) could still be on,” said Neal, who trains in partnership with his wife Lyn.
“I wasn’t worried about the sale, it will happen at some stage, meanwhile it’s nice to have one like him around.”
The son of Sportswriter has won two recent workouts at Cambridge Raceway, including a 2200m hit-out on Saturday.
“I just needed to give him another couple of trials this time in because he is still a green horse and he needs that practice to get back into it, but I am pretty happy with him now,” Neal said.
“He’s had the two workouts this time in. He won his other workout as well and now he is ready to race.”
Neal is having some issues in placing Alterior Motif, but he is hoping to kick-off his preparation at Cambridge Raceway this coming Saturday.
“I am pretty limited to what I can do because I can’t get him to go Auckland way around at the moment,” he said.
“We have been looking at trying to get a free win and put a junior driver on but there are hardly any junior drivers around.
“We will put Alterior Motif in for Saturday and hopefully it will be a junior race where we have a chance of a free win.”
A raceday return is also imminent for Neal’s quirky but talented trotter Credit Master.
The nine-win gelding took on the pacers in the same workout as his stablemate on Saturday and Neal was delighted that the erratic square-gaiter was able to get around in one piece.
“Credit Master went around last week as well and galloped out of the gate, which he shouldn’t have done. So we had bit of a gear change,” Neal said.
“We were pretty happy with him on Saturday.”
Credit Master has had a tendency to become anxious and break after a few starts and Neal said he has been trying to work through those issues.
“He has got a bit of a mental problem in that if he has two or three starts he just stresses out and is hard to handle,” he said.
“At home he is just an angel, anybody can do anything with him, but he just gets that wound up at the races and the more starts he has the worse he gets.
“We are working through a few things to see what we can do for that anxiety.”
His erratic nature has ruled him out of a trip south this spring and Neal said he will instead stay at home and target some of the trotting features over the Christmas-New Year period.
“I didn’t put him in for the Dominion. He just needs to stay around here and try and get it right,” Neal said.
“I didn’t know if he would handle it down there and it might blow his chances of being okay here around Christmas time.” – Cambridge Raceway
