Frozone aiming for Newcastle Cup

By Glenn Davis

BRISBANE, Sept 2 AAP - Frozone will be out to stake a claim for a Newcastle Cup berth when he runs at Eagle Farm on Saturday.

Trainer Alan Bailey is confident of a strong performance in the Coca Cola Amatil Handicap from the five-year-old who will be having his first start since his narrow defeat by Twin Wing in the Listed Grafton Cup (2350m) on July 15.

"No-one knew who won the Grafton Cup, including me, and there was only a whisker in it at the finish," Bailey said.

Bailey has signalled that Frozone, who has also been nominated for the Group One The Metropolitan (2400m) at Randwick, will dodge both races unless the southern tracks remain dry.

The Newcastle Cup (2300m) will be run on September 16 while the Metropolitan is on October 2.

"He only struck two decent dry tracks during the winter and ran second both times in the Ipswich and Grafton Cups," Bailey said.

"He always races well on good tracks but if there's any give at all he's hopeless."

Bailey has always had a good opinion of Frozone who has won six of his 22 starts and earned prizemoney in excess of $235,000.

"If he goes okay on Saturday I'm sending him down for the Newcastle Cup," Bailey said.

"He's in the Metropolitan as well but we won't decide about running him in that until we see how he performs in the Newcastle Cup."

Frozone had never started past 2200 metres before tackling the Grafton Cup and Bailey was confident he would acquit himself well over 2400 metres if he gets to the Metropolitan.

"He was very strong the day he ran second to Our Lukas in the Ipswich Cup and he's since run second in the Grafton Cup," Bailey said.

Bailey will be chasing his second Newcastle Cup after winning the spring feature with Another Warrior in 2004.

Another Warrior, a son of Brave Warrior, went on to finish fifth to County Tyrone in the Metropolitan at his next outing before Bailey sent him to Victoria to campaign that year.

Another Warrior won the Group Two Moonee Valley Cup but was never a hope when finishing 16th to Makybe Diva in the Melbourne Cup.

Bailey expects Frozone to take a great deal of improvement following his Eagle Farm performance which will be his first outing in seven weeks.

"He's a tough little horse and I only gave him two weeks in the paddock after the Grafton Cup," he said.

"He hasn't been in work very long and he'll be a lot better for the run no matter what happens."

Bailey was critical of the handicapping system in Queensland after Frozone received 56 kilograms in the 2100-metre event.

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