Clarken in no rush with Rossa

Beau Rossa won’t attempt to avenge his Memsie Stakes (1400m) defeat of 12 months ago, nor will he be seen at the races any time soon, with Will Clarken revealing the hulking gelding has only just returned to work.

The son of Unencumbered emerged as a serious weight-for-age challenger last spring following victory in the Lightning Stakes (1050m), as well as narrow placings behind Behemoth in the Spring Stakes (1200m) and Memsie Stakes (1400m), the latter in which he defeated Tofane, Inspirational Girl and Colette.

But unplaced runs in the $1 million Magic Millions Cup (1400m), D.C. McKay Stakes (1200m) and The Goodwood (1200m) prompted his trainer to give the galloper a decent eight-week spell in favour of a tilt at some early spring riches.

Clarken said the lure of feature races in Perth later in the year, including a potential tilt at the Group 1 Winterbottom Stakes (1200m), was strong given the rising five-year-old is largely owned by Western Australian interests.

“He’s had a spell and he’s done fabulously well but he’s literally done three days’ work,” Clarken said.

“He will just tick along and we’re not going to train him for any race in particular, we’re just going to let the horse come to us.

“We’re going race him sparingly over the back end of the spring and if he came up perfectly, we’d look to take him to Perth for the summer.

“If not, we’ll just tick him along and have him ready to go early in the autumn.

“He’s actually furnished a little bit and he’ll have a good 12 months of racing ahead of him after he gets fit this time around.”

Another of Clarken’s Goodwood runners, multiple Stakes-winning import Ironclad, is several weeks ahead of Beau Rossa in his preparation but Clarken said his spring campaign was also fluid.

With a new beachside property at Sellicks Hill, as well as access to Murray Bridge’s uphill gallop, Clarken said he was looking forward to varying the gelding’s work and keeping his mind fresh.

“He’s a month in front but again, he’s a horse that will tell us when he’s ready,” he said.

“He’s put weight on but he’s actually held his fitness.

“We’re going to do some different things with the training of the horse – for a big, imposing horse he’s very stress so I’m going to try to train him completely out of the farm this time in.

“He’ll go to Murray Bridge to do some work on the uphill sand track and then he’ll only go into Morphettville to gallop on the Tuesdays.”

Parsifal and He’s A Balter, who represented the stable during the Dubai World Cup Carnival earlier this year, are back in work and being aimed at some of the black-type sprints during Adelaide’s summer.

Despite their gallant performances on the world stage, as well as some solid results domestically, Clarken said he wasn’t happy with his season, which has so far yielded 39 winners across South Australia and Victoria.

But he remains optimistic that, with some more time to find the right balance between training at his different facilities, he can stamp himself as the leading trainer in Adelaide.

“I reckon it’ll take the guts of next season to really get a handle of things,” he said.

“We had a train wreck of a season just gone – we had some handy results and we trained some Stakes winners but we need to train more winners.

“I think this year again might be a testing year but from there on we’ll really have a grasp on the new facilities and we’ll aim down a pathway to really grow our stable and be a real powerhouse in the state.”