'To win on Sunday would be the icing on the cake,' says trainer
What reaction trainer Joe Janiak is going to get from Takeover Target when he finally sends him for a spell after the HK$12 million Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint is anyone's guess, but one look at the gelding shows it won't improve him.
Despite having spent the past nine months in and out of planes and foreign stabling and racking up Asia Miles points, the world's best turf sprinter strolled by yesterday morning glowing like someone's ideal of a healthy horse.
'He looks even better than when he was in England where his coat was all wrong because of the change of seasons. It was summer and he was growing a winter coat there, like he would in Australia,' Janiak said. 'Didn't look that good, but he raced the same.'
The Takeover Target story never fades in the retelling, never ceases to remind us in a Seabiscuit kind of way that even the grip on racing of the mega rich and mighty can be loosened in an occasional crazy fairytale.
A taxi driver and hobby-horse trainer living in a caravan at a country racecourse, Janiak stepped in just ahead of the knackery to buy Takeover Target as an unraced cast-off for A$1,250 (HK$7,500), plus A$125 goods and services tax.
When he then had a vet go over the gelding, the report was an encyclopedia of equine problems - Takeover Target had already had virtually every operation possible but Janiak pressed on, thinking he might squeeze one or two runs out of the horse despite his bad knees.