Talented Tasmanian two-year-old Musqui was found to have a cold after finishing eighth in the $70,000 Jim Conway Handicap at Sandown on Saturday.
The gelding showed his usual speed to lead for the first half of the race but didn’t respond when the pressure was applied and was eased down by jockey David Pires in the home straight.
He is already back home and will be spelled for a month before being prepared for the rich 3YO Cup at Mowbray in November.
Musqui won his first two starts in Tasmania in brilliant fashion but trainer Christine Crook was a little worried about the gelding in the lead-up to his Victorian trip.
“I thought he might have been getting a bit of a cold so I had his blood tested,” Crook said.
“It was perfect, the best result I’ve had from one of my horses for two years”.
“But after Saturday’s race, by the time we got back to where we were staying, there was muck running out of his nose”.
Crook said that she had been reluctant to race Musqui at Sandown because it was “a very demanding track”.
“I really wanted to take him to MooneeValley but that would have meant going a month between runs,” she said.
“There’s a MooneeValley meeting on Wednesday but no two-year-old race”.
Crook said that she had not trained a faster two-year-old than Musqui.
“The only one that might have been as quick was his full brother Turbo Qui,” she said.