Starcraft may start next month
Starcraft, who arrived from Australia to join Luca Cumani earlier this year, could have his first British start at Royal Ascot at York next month.
The chestnut five-year-old is a multiple Group One winner over a variety of distances and his new trainer is not quite sure what his best trip will be, but the 10-furlong Prince of Wales’s Stakes Stakes is one possibility.
“He is doing very well – I am happy with him,” Cumani told At The Races.
“It is taking a little while because the horse came from an Australian summer to a bitterly cold February here, and for about a month he had a quizzical look about him because he could not understand where he was and what was happening to him!
“Then he started growing a bit of a coat and we had to take it steady with him. We have started doing a bit of work and I am very pleased with what I have seen so far.
“We haven’t pushed any buttons yet, nor will we for a couple of weeks, I suppose. We haven’t got a target yet – I think Ascot at York might be about the time where he might be ready for a run.”
Asked whether the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes could be a target, the Italian trainer replied: “It could be – we haven’t decided on the target because the other difficulty is that he has won in Australia at distances of seven, a mile and a mile and a half, so we haven’t worked out which trip it would be.”
Fellow Antipodean Elvstroem races in the Juddmonte Lockinge at Newbury this weekend and Cumani hopes he will run well to give Starcraft’s form a boost.
He added: “He beat Elvstroem every time they met, so I was very pleased when I saw Elvstroem win in Dubai.
“As long as he doesn’t beat my runner Le Vie Dei Colori in the Lockinge, I’ll be very happy.”
