Patience and precision have been the vital ingredients to Sacramento’s Sydney Cup campaign, which will finally ramp up a notch at Rosehill.
Last year’s VRC St Leger winner, Sacramento kicked off his current preparation on Boxing Day as trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott set about boosting his rating in the hope of targeting some major autumn carnival riches.
The strategy has worked with Sacramento stringing together three wins in succession and losing few admirers with his last-start second to subsequent Mornington Cup winner Mount Popa in the Randwick City Stakes (2000m).
He has earned his place in Saturday’s Group Three N E Manion Cup, a traditional Sydney Cup stepping stone, and Bott cannot wait to finally get him back over a genuine staying journey.
“We’ve been looking forward to him stretching out to this sort of trip for a while now,” Bott said.
“He is still quite lightly-rated so we had to get him going a bit earlier in the carnival to get runs on the board and try to get his rating up.
“By the time he got to his last start, he was probably in need of the mile-and-a-half and he just ran into a horse that was a bit more brilliant on the day and who has gone on to frank that form.”
Waterhouse and Bott will also be represented in the race by Newcastle Cup runner-up Hush Writer.
He is expected to strip fitter for two runs from a spell but his best form is on firm footing.
Both horses are being aimed at the Group One Sydney Cup (3200m) at Randwick on April 17.