Racking up the wins towards Tasmania Cup

In a messy standing start that saw main chances Holy Basil and Western Sonador gallop away, trainer-driver Michael Stanley negotiated the early trouble with Rackemup Tigerpie to settle one-out and three-back before racing outside the leader for the final 1400m.

“When Merserati found the front, with all due respect to him, he is a step behind my bloke and a few of the backmarkers that came over.

“I was happy to sit outside the leader and dictate once I knew Holy Basil and Western Sonador had missed away,” said Stanley.

Stanley took some confidence out of the race by his pacer’s manners in the race’s early stages.

“The pleasing thing for me is my bloke stepped away and had to dodge through a bit of that traffic, and it didn’t phase him,” said the trainer-driver.

Stanley, a semi-regular to the Tasmanian carnivals, has had the Group 1 feature in mind for a while.

“We have had it in the back of our mind for quite a while because he qualified from a stand two or three years ago, so once the prize money had changed, it was on the radar,” he said.

Rackemup Tigerpie takes his record to 15 wins from 68 starts, with two of those wins coming this season after being winless in eight starts during the 2021 season.

“He got ulcers really bad, and he had lost his form, and we couldn’t work out why, we had him on ulcer treatment but it wasn’t working, and we ended up getting more severe treatment and spelling him, and since we have done that he has been a different racehorse this preparation,” Stanley explained.

Locally trained pacers Puntarno Stride and Sunny Sanz filled the placings, in a mile rate of 2m 1.0s for the 2579m.

The barrier draw for Saturday night’s Final, along with the Tasmanian Derby, Tasmanian Oaks, George Johnson, and the Eric Reece Memorial Final, will be released on Tuesday afternoon.