Trainer Greg Hickman will return to the normality of his Warwick Farm stable after the excitement of Pierata’s stunning win in the Magic Millions Guineas.
Hickman and Pierata are on the way home from the Gold Coast with the colt to have a week or two in the paddock while his trainer attends to the other horses in the yard.
Among them is Top Striker who runs at Randwick on Saturday and Tiara Star who is in Thursday’s Gosford Guineas.
Top Striker will be having his first start since September in the 1200m-benchmark 85 with Jess Taylor to ride.
Taylor showed her skills on the Jason Coyle-trained Kawaikini on Saturday and gets another opportunity for a rare metropolitan victory.
“Jess rides him in all his work and is being rewarded for that,” Hickman said.
“She has put a lot of work in on him and deserves it. We are just trying to get a couple of Saturday race wins with him.”
Hickman said he and Pierata’s owners had not yet mapped out a program for the colt with a Group One win the next objective to enhance his value as a stallion.
“He’s got a really good constitution but he’s still mentally immature so we’ll sit down and figure things out,” he said.
“I haven’t been home for a while so we need to let the dust settle.”
Pierata’s win in Saturday’s Guineas took his earnings to almost $1.5 million with an additional $500,00 bonus for winning the Queensland summer triple crown.
While his earnings pale in comparison to his star stablemate, Top Striker is the type of bread and butter horse that keeps a small stable going with his prize money in excess of $220,000.
An additional 14 horses have been nominated for Saturday’s other benchmark 85 race on Saturday, over 1600m, after only five entries were initially received.
So Willie, one of the original horses entered, is the highest-rated of the 19 and has top weight of 61kg.
