Doo You Want Me on path to Northern Derby

Stephen Doody likes the idea of being back in the big time.

And in Doo You Want Me (Captain Crunch) he just might have the horse to take him there again.

He has only just turned three but scored his first win away from home (Manawatu) when he came from a tricky position to win the strongest pacing race at Cambridge on Friday night.

It was win number four, all in a row, from just eight starts for Doo You Want Me and he is clearly the real deal.

After taking a while to learn his craft he won twice in lower grades at Palmerston North before his arrival moment came when beating some serious older horses like Rough And Ready, Beta Prepare and Warloch in the Palmerstonian last month, no small feat for a two-year-old.

He showed that increased tractability again when coming from three back on the inner to win a heat of the Provincial Pace Series on Friday night and will return to Cambridge for the $35,000 final next Friday.

DOO YOU WANT ME REPLAY

Then Doody will start planning to get Doo You Want Me to Alexandra Park in March with the Northern Derby his first black type test.

That is the plan,” says Doody.

“It would be nice to have a Group 1 pacing horse again, I think the last one I had good enough to race in those races up there was Te Kawau.”

Before that of course Doody was the man who put the early touches on 1990s heroine Blossom Lady and then Mister DG while he has had open class trotters like Braig, who won 18 races.

Getting a serious Derby-type horse is not easy and it will not be an easy path to trod if last season’s star juvenile Marketplace comes back to his best.

But Doody, who trains a team of 11 from his Manawatu base these days, says Doo You Want Me is likely to be hanging around.

“The guys who own him paid something like $35,000 for him after he had been passed in at the yearling sales down south.

“They have had some good offers for him but they are enjoying him and I think they will be keeping him.”

Doody still does the majority of his training from home and brings the horses north each time, although Doo You Want Me will spend a few days with Mike Berger looking after him while Doody pops back down south for the Kapiti Coast meeting.

Another horse already having tested her toe in the big time but likely to head back there was Friday night’s other major race winner One More Moment.

The Zev Meredith-trained mare capped a magic five weeks by winning the $50,000 Dunstan Horsefeeds Breeders Stakes in a stirring battle with the equally in-form Belle Neige.

The two have both excelled over the the last month and with the open class ranks small on numbers a mare like One More Moment wouldn’t look out of place in a Rowe Cup in the autumn if she keeps improving.

For complete race results, click here.

by Michael Guerin, for Harness Racing New Zealand