Elson Boy is in a rich vein of form of late, winning his fifth race in a row last start at Scone on their feature Saturday meeting and trainer Dar Lunn is keen to see what heights the gelding can reach in the Spring.
Bought for just $6000, Elson Boy took a while to hit his straps as a racehorse but has certainly done so now with Lunn training the son of El Roca to lead his races, which he has done in all eight of his career wins.
“I was riding him that way, getting him out the back door and running home and it took him ten starts to win a maiden so I thought I’d better do something different, so we put a set of blinkers on him and rode him completely different and he won,” Lunn said.
“Ever since then that’s the way we’ve been riding him, it just sort of suited him.”
Elson Boy had qualified for this year’s Country Championships Final at Randwick with a win in the Coonamble Qualifier over Gallant Star, who ended up running second in the $1 million final, but was unable to take his place.
“He trialled brilliant six or seven days before and came home and pulled a muscle in his neck, he couldn’t turn his head either way so that’s why he didn’t go down,” Lunn said.
Lunn has never had a winner at either Rosehill or Randwick and was forced to wait for the opportunity with Elson Boy entered on the June 1st meeting which was abandoned mid-meeting, but the Dubbo-based trainer believes the horse can measure up again on Saturday despite the month-long gap between runs.
“We’re getting a new track put in so we haven’t been able to get on the track that much, but in saying that he did work well this morning,” Lunn said.
Saturday’s race at Rosehill is a benchmark 78 over 1300m and if Elson Boy can continue to improve, Lunn believes he could put his hand up for a slot in The Kosciuszko.
“We’ll go around at Rosehill on Saturday and win, lose or draw I’d say we’ll give him a let up for a month to six weeks and come back and look for a nice race, something like The Kosciuszko probably wouldn’t be beyond him.”
Apprentice Chelsea Hillier, who rode Elson Boy to victory at Scone and claims 3kg in town will continue her association with the horse.
