Kraking on to the Diamond path

Stakes winning two-year-old colt Krakarib. Photo: racing.com

*Published on racing.com

Group Three Maribyrnong Plate winner Krakarib will make his return to the track in Thursday’s Blue Diamond Preview at Sandown with the intention to progress on to Victoria’s premier juvenile race with the son of Ribchester a month later.

The Simon Zahra trained colt had his second jump out for the preparation at Flemington on Friday morning, six days out from his first run for the New Year.

“He won the trial, led them up and had a nice kick and went to the line pretty comfortably,” Zahra said.

“He’ll improve off that and probably improve off the run as well.”

Zahra has succeeded in the premier two-year-old events in the land before, sharing the training duties with Mathew Ellerton when Crystal Lily won the 2010 Golden Slipper, and said that he had some slight reservations about Krakarib’s ability to run out the distance of the Blue Diamond itself.

“My only concern is whether he’s going to be strong at the 1200, so until we stretch him beyond the 1000, it’s going to be hard to know,” he said.

“He’s quite a hard-going horse, so we might tinker with a bit of gear to try to get him to relax at some stage. He’s educated, he’s quick, he’s not overly big, so it’s whether he can sustain it for the 1200, that’s probably going to be the query.”

Zahra explained that Krakarib had had three weeks in the paddock following his victory at Flemington during the Melbourne Cup Carnival and emphasized that with the jump out and race schedule in place, it was important that nothing went wrong with the horse in the lead up to his resumption.

While the dates for Krakarib’s kick off point and ultimate goal have been locked in, what happens in between those two days at Sandown is still to be determined.

“We’ll just analyse after Thursday, we’ll just see how he goes, see how he looks,” Zahra said.

“He’s the sort of horse you can space his runs not a problem and that’s even without a jump out in between, so we’ll just see how he goes Thursday.”

Sportsbet has Krakrib at $17 in its market for the Blue Diamond on February 25.