The Blue Diamond Stakes is a race that Lindsay Park has chased since its inception in 1971.
In its more than 50-year history, Lindsay Park has won the race on 10 occasions, starting with Colin Hayes who won Melbourne’s premier two-year-old race three times before his son David took over as lead trainer to win it on five occasions.
David joined with his son Ben and nephew Tom Dabernig for one win while Ben and brother J D won the race last year with Littler Brose.
J D’s twin brother Will is now on the training ticket and would no doubt like to add his name to those other family members to have won the Group 1 race over 1200m at Caulfield.
Zestiman will be the sole runner for the stable on Saturday and is considered one of the outsiders at $61 in latest betting.
However, it would be unwise to write off Zestiman just because of his odds.
Lindsay Park has a knack of not only winning the race at double figures, but also filling a place with a youngster at long odds.
Out Of Danger supplied Lindsay Park with its first Blue Diamond in 1976 at $41 while Mahassin won at $26 in 1990.
Canonise ($13, 1991), Nadeem ($17, 2006) and Reann ($14, 2008) were all double figure odd winners while placegetters include Reemah ($101, 2015), Zamzam ($26, 2016) and Arkansaw Kid ($61) last year.
Ben Hayes said there was similarities between Arkansaw Kid and Zestiman.
Both are coming off a trip to Sydney where they competed in the Inglis Millennium in which Zestiman finished fifth while Arkansaw Kid finished down the track in the lead up to last year’s race.
“We’ve followed the same path as Arkansaw Kid, and he ran third last year,” Hayes said.
“He went back to the farm after Sydney, and he worked great on Monday with an older horse.
“We’ve applied the winkers and he’s drawn a nice barrier to get a good run. He’s drawn next to Coleman, so hopefully he should be able to follow him wherever he goes.
“In the Millennium, he got back to nearly last, and he ran the second fastest last 600 metres.
“All the signs are good, the step up to 1200 metres should be good, but we’re under no illusions that it’s a very hard race.
“But it’s one of those races if you get the right run and you have a turn of foot, you can run well.
“He’s coped with the travel well, he’s not big, but he’s a horse that is handling everything.
“I’m very confident he’ll run in the forward half.”
