Quality three-year-old Meritable (Snitzel) pleased connections when winning a 1200m trial at Taupo on Tuesday.
It was the second trial for the Murray Baker and Andrew Forsman-trained son of Snitzel, who was last seen on raceday finishing runner-up to Noverre (NZ) (Savabeel) in the Gr.1 New Zealand 2000 Guineas (1600m).
Raced by the China Horse Club, Meritable came from last in his heat to score from Helena Baby (NZ) (Guillotine) by a head and has all but booked his passage to Queensland for the Winter Carnival.
“I’m really happy, obviously it’s never easy to get back at Taupo when the track’s quick, and make that sort of ground,” Forsman said.
“It was promising to see and I just liked the way he switched off and attacked the line.
“I really want to get him to Brisbane so hopefully he comes through this well and we can start plotting a bit of a path.
“We had two options really, one was to run in the Cambridge Breeders’ (Gr.3, 1200m) on Saturday week at Te Rapa.
“It’s just a bit of a shame that the direct flight to Brisbane is the day before that race, so we may just have to go on the plane and perhaps run first up on the Gold Coast Guineas (Gr.3, 1200m)
“That would be to see where he stacks up and then his options after that are probably the Fred Best (Gr.3, 1400m) and then assess whether he takes on older horses.”
