Photo by Stuart McCormick
HUNTER Cup hero Swayzee will chase a Miracle Mile start.
Trainer Jason Grimson confirmed the seven-year-old would tackle one of the two qualifying sprints at Menangle on Saturday night.
“With me up here (Brisbane), Cam Hart was good enough to go and drive him in work for me (Saturday) and he was very happy,” he said.
“So, he’ll go to Menangle this week to try and get a spot in the (Miracle) Mile.”
Grimson dismissed suggestions Swayzee’s great staying prowess wouldn’t suit sprint racing.
“I hear people saying that, but I don’t agree,” he said. “Good stayers win hard miles. Leap To Fame will find it very hard to beat us if we settle in front of him.”
Swayzee has won the only two sprint races he has contested since joining Grimson’s stable back in April, 2023.
The first was his actual first start for Grimson over 1730m at Bathurst on May 10, 2023.
The other came in the first round of 2023 Inter Dominion heats at Albion Park when he paced a 1min52.5sec mile rate for 1660m.
Grimson said stable newcomer Captain Ravishing and star mare Aardies Express would be his other key runners in the Miracle Mile qualifiers this week.
“I thought Captain Ravishing’s trial last week was quite good and he’ll just keep improving. It’s just whether we got him early enough for a race like this,” he said
Stable foreman Jack Callaghan is set to drive Captain Ravishing, who has won 12 of his 25 starts, but not raced since a second at Gloucester Park on November 29.
Captain Ravishing’s only two Menangle mile runs were a second to Catch A Wave in the 2023 Chariots Of Fire and a seventh to the same pacer in the Miracle Mile a week later.
