After a year where nothing went right for The Inferno (Holy Roman Emperor), trainer Cliff Brown is looking for his smart sprinter to bounce back in 2023.
The former star Singapore sprinter will resume in the A$500,000 The Country Discovery (1100m) at Geelong on Good Friday.
Brown believes The Inferno can get back to the form he showed in his first Australian campaign in the spring of 2021.
During that preparation, he won the Gr.2 McEwen Stakes and then finished second in the Gr.1 Moir Stakes, where he was just beaten by Wild Ruler (Snitzel) at The Valley.
After finishing 10th in The Everest, he was spelled, before resuming in the 2022 Black Caviar Lightning, when things started to go wrong.
The Inferno finished eighth, but almost fell after they had travelled 200m when Profiteer (Capitalist) cut across him.
“He had his legs virtually taken out from underneath him and, to be fair, from that moment I chased my tail the whole autumn,” Brown said.
The Inferno’s best performance last spring was his first-up fourth in the McEwen Stakes, before he finished 11th in the Moir Stakes and last in the VRC Champions Sprint.
“His three runs during the spring were on rain-affected tracks, which he doesn’t like,” Brown said.
Brown was pleased with the six-year-old gelding’s recent jumpout at Mornington.
“It was a soft trial and he’ll have another one before The Discovery,” he said.
The Inferno ran in the inaugural Country Discovery last year at Sale, where he finished seventh behind In The Boat (Nostradamus).
Originally purchased out of Westbury Stud’s 2018 New Zealand Bloodstock Book 1 draft, The Inferno came across with Cliff Brown when he relocated back to Victoria in 2021 from Singapore, where he had won eight of his first nine starts and was second on the other occasion.
