Lord Of The Sky will return to the races in the 2016 Oakleigh Plate and trainer Robbie Laing is confident that the speedy sprinter is ready to run a big race first-up at Caulfield on Saturday.
Lord Of The Sky was only narrowly denied by Chautauqua in the 2015 edition of the TJ Smith Stakes. Photo by: Steve Hart
Lord Of The Sky produced career best performances to finish second in both the Group 1 TJ Smith Stakes (1200m) and the Group 1 The Goodwood (1200m), bur he failed to fire in the Group 3 John Monash Stakes (1100m) and he was found lame after he didn’t beat home a runner in the Group 3 Bletchingly Stakes (1200m).
The Danerich entire was found to have damaged his tendon sheath during the race and he made the injury far worse when he accidently tightened the co-flex bandage that was placed on his injured leg.
Laing admits that Lord Of The Sky’s leg still does not look great, but he told Racing.com that scans had shown there was no damage to his tendon and said that the horse has thrived on the water walker and treadmill in the lead-up to the 2016 Oakleigh Plate.
“It was a tendon sheath that he had pulled and that is why he pulled up out of the Bletchingly,” Laing said.
“Scans showed even two days after the race that the tendon was good and there was no damage at all, but the tendon sheath had bled fluid out and it looked ugly.
“The real damage was done a week after when he grabbed on to the co-flex bandage overnight and tried to take it off and he did a lot of damage.
“Bleeding formed between the tendon sheath and the skin and to this day it still doesn’t look pretty.
“He has had six scans, he had his latest scan on his tendon on Monday and his tendon is reported to be 100% perfect.
“His action is great and judging by the way he galloped it was as good as he has ever galloped on Monday morning.”
Lord Of The Sky has generally produced his best performances at the highest level of racing as an outsider and Laing is confident that the five-year-old will be very tough to beat in the Oakleigh Plate if he can replicate his performance in the T.J. Smith Stakes last year.
“He is a running machine,” Laing said.
“All he wants to do is run and he has copped a lot of criticism over the years from punters for wanting to go too hard and then not being able to maintain a strong gallop, but it took Chautauqua to beat him by an inch in the TJ Smith.
“It was probably a career best and he had it run until the last metre.”
Lord Of The Sky is currently available at 2016 Oakleigh Plate odds of $26 with Ladbrokes, while Keen Array ($5) and Heatherly ($5) are locked in a battle for favouritism from Bounding ($6.50), Fell Swoop ($9) and first emergency Secret Agenda ($12).
