Although the major racing carnivals in both Melbourne and Sydney are drawing to a close, Warwick Farm trainer Matthew Smith is already shifting focus to the next opportunities on the calendar.
Smith is counting down the final weeks of rehabilitation for his stable star Headwall, who is close to completing his recovery from the pastern injury that cut short his spring campaign after only one appearance.
Headwall had begun the season in outstanding touch, defeating Lady Shenandoah in the $1 million Group 3 Concorde Stakes before the injury emerged.
The setback proved costly, ruling him out of the country’s richest sprint events on the east coast, including the $20 million The Everest. Smith used a football analogy to describe the impact on his stable.
“It’s like when you’ve got ‘Buddy’ Franklin kicking goals and he does a knee, that’s what it’s like for us,” Smith lamented.
“You lose your best player on the team, your best earner, it’s tricky.
He is still spelling for another month then he’ll come in and away we’ll go.”
While Smith is enthusiastic about seeing Headwall return to the track, he remains committed to a measured approach, highlighting that high-value races stretch well into late April.
Earlier this year, Headwall recorded several top-class performances, including a luckless fourth in the Oakleigh Plate before finishing second behind Joliestar in the Newmarket Handicap.
He followed that with a third in the T J Smith Stakes and another runner-up result in the $5 million The Quokka, a race Smith believes could again become a key autumn target.
“It would probably be late autumn, he might head to The Quokka again,” Smith said.
“(We might) go back and try to get that on the board…but we will be happy just to get him back sound, get a couple of runs into him and see what happens.
He’s a gun, the horse, if we can get him back.”
Racing fans looking ahead to Headwall’s return can view Australia’s most trusted betting sites via our betting sites comparison page.