Keystone Del pictured taking out the Bill Collins Trotters Mile at Cranbourne.
Keystone Del’s team will hope to build on his latest winning streak on Saturday night and leave recent injury woes well in his wake.
The eight-year-old will be favoured to record a fourth successive win in the Group 3 City of Melton Scotch Notch Memorial, a fine comeback since a right kidney tear threatened to derail his 2015.
Dean Molander, husband of trainer Nicole, said connections were eager to “just take it one race at a time”.
“So far so good,” he said.
Keystone Del reeled off 13 consecutive wins from March 22, 2014, beginning with the Group 1 Great Southern Star.
Coincidently, it was the 2015 staging of the same race – when Keystone Del faded to finish seventh – that concerns emerged about the gelding’s ailing health.
“He had quite a bit of blood is his urine when he was getting swabbed,” Molander said. “It happened a few times.”
The repeat incidence made connections believe it was more than muscle tie-up.
Keystone Del was sent to the University of Melbourne, where he was placed on a dialysis machine and across three days of testing the tear was discovered, with rest the anecdote and enabling his return.
“After every run now he has a urine test and is monitored,” Molander said.
And, to repeat, “so far so good”.
“He set a track record two starts ago and Chris Alford said if he let him go last time he would have broken it again.”
It was August 14 at Melton where Keystone Del ran a track record 1:54.5 mile rate, fittingly eclipsing favourite Maori Time, who eight months earlier broke Keystone Del’s 13-race winning streak.
Alford then guided Keystone Del to a 6.7m win in Group 3 True Roman Trotters Free For All at his last start, having been called to have “coasted” in a “one-act affair”.
Notably, Pretty Sunday (second), Aleppo Midas (third) and Aleppo Sunrise (fourth) were among those in his wake and they’ll return for potentially a repeat dose Saturday night in the City of Melton Scotch Notch Memorial.
“Everything being equal you’d expect he will go very close, and he trialled very well at Geelong on Monday,” Molander said.
The pre-race trial is common practice for Keystone Del, who Molander said was not one to overtrain, “and if we give him one decent run the week of his race that just brings him right up.”
He said Kyvalley Blur would be “the hardest to beat” Saturday night, but added “the only time he has beaten him was when he had those kidney problems”.
“(Kyvalley Blur) is a very good horse and has a good record, but I’m sure the rest of the runners are more scared of us than we are of them.”
All going well, Keystone Del will be directed at the Bill Collins Trotters Mile in November before, longer-term, a return assault on the Great Southern Star in March where the team will attempt to adhere to some unfinished business.
