Trainer Julius Sandhu heads to Sandown liking what he is seeing from lightly raced galloper Renovation Show.
A winner at his last two starts, Renovation Show runs in the Sportsbet Fast Form Handicap (1400m) on Wednesday looking to bring up the hat-trick.
Renovation Show must carry wins over from his past two starts at Sale on wet tracks to a good surface at Sandown.
Sandhu said Renovation Show had been a slow developer but was beginning get his act together.
He said there was three things he will learn about Renovation Show after he runs on Wednesday.
“One is he is getting different quality of opposition, two is the track condition, a Good 4 as opposed to a seven or an eight, and third is that he is going from Sale to Sandown and a big, wide-open track, a vastly different landscape to race on,” Sandhu said.
After one run with Peter Moody and Katherine Coleman, Renovation Show made his way to Sandhu’s stable where his new trainer discovered a raw horse mentally and a horse requiring condition to fill his frame.
Trying to knock over a maiden win before a spell, Sandhu was unable to achieve that, but on Renovation Show’s return to Sandhu’s Cranbourne base, the trainer found a different animal.
“Whilst we didn’t achieve that maiden win, what we did get was a fair amount of both mental and physical stimulation through that campaign,” Sandhu said.
“He learned a bit about what racing was all about and physically we put enough pressure on him to then go out and develop and fill into that frame and he came back quite a different horse to the one that went out.”
Sandhu said if he was to rely on Renovation Show’s trackwork as a guide, he would be disappointed, but come race day, the gelding transforms.
“He’s not a ‘Morning Glory’,” Sandhu said.
“I’ve got a few of them that work the house down, but he’s the other way and will only do what he has to do.
“He just never gives you the feel that he has 10 lengths up the sleeve when you let him go, but he races better than he works, and I will take that to the bank every day.”
Sandhu abides by the old cliche of one run at a time, and Renovation Show is no different.
But Renovation Show reminds Sandhu of a former galloper in his care, Do You Reckon (now trained by Alex Rae), who started a campaign in February and continued all the way through to winning the Melbourne Cup Carnival Country Cup Final the following November.
Sandhu said both horses held themselves in a similar way around the stable.
“He’s a great doer, doesn’t do anything wrong. He’ll eat, he’ll sleep, he relaxes, he’ll do his work, just like Do You Reckon,” Sandhu said.
“I have hope that if he continues to race well and tick boxes along the way, he may end up in a good race over spring.
“I’m not saying a Stakes race, that may come, just a nice race with some good prize money.”