Well Deserved can be third-time lucky
James Peters-trained 4YO grey is tonight's best bet after working up a storm on the training track
The improving grey Well Deserved looked a million dollars on the training track and should be hard to beat in Race 4 at Kranji tonight.
On Tuesday morning, the James Peters-trained four-year-old grey caught the eye with a sizzling gallop on the right-handed Track 6.
The New Zealand-bred gelding, owned by Well Done H Racing Stable, was full of zest when running the 600m in a swift 35sec. The horse was so full of running that his rider had a hard time pulling him up.
Well Deserved now looks spot-on and gets his chance to be third-time lucky as he is meeting only an Open Maiden field over the Polytrack 1,200m.
Although he is the highest-rated with 60 points, he is not conceding weight to most of his runners in the weight-for-age affair. That is another advantage.
Well Deserved showed promise in his debut on Feb 8. In that Maiden event over 1,200m on turf, he raced around midfield early before finishing third to Salvador. Take note that he was unbalanced in the race and he lost by just 21/2 lengths.
Second-up on March 10 over 1,400m on turf, he raced handier early as the $13 favourite. But he went to far wide in the straight and, although he eventually finished just a neck second to $236 outsider Cloud Shadow, he was not captured in the picture, being so far apart from the winner .
It is fair to say that, if he had cut corners, he would have justified his favourite's tag.
Now that he has improved out of sight, he should score his well-deserved victory tonight.
Couple him with the Bruce Marsh-trained Colour Paint for the forecast. Colour Paint also has a nice record of two seconds from three starts and has also made marked improvement, judging by his fluent gallop on Tuesday morning with race-jockey Vlad Duric astride.
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