Black Chevalier out to give Feek Racing another staying success
THE fledgling training partnership of David and Coral Feek could receive a big boost on Friday night as the duo line up Black Chevalier in the Benchmark 84 Handicap at Moonee Valley.
The five-year-old Commands gelding will face some stiff competition from the stables of Darren Weir and Chris Waller, but after back-to-back placings this preparation, Black Chevalier shouldn’t be discounted.
Punters often find it hard to predict the extreme staying races, but as co-trainer David Feek explains, Black Chevalier already has winning form over the long distances.
“He’s a horse that has already won over 2700m at Stawell last preparation,” Feek told horsebetting.com.au.
“Obviously it’s a step up in class, but we tend to find with these 3000m races that you get two or three at the top of the weights that are probably the more fancied runners on paper, but the class of the race falls away quite sharply from there.”
Feek has had success at Moonee Valley over this distance, winning with Real Jazz in 2016, which gave the stable its first metropolitan winner.
“We have won one of these races before with a mare called Real Jazz, so we know what it takes to win and Ben Thompson claims 2kg, so he’ll go around with 53kg.”
Black Chevalier is noted front-runner, which could take advantage of the tight-turning Moonee Valley track with the light weight.
“He often leads in his race and we’ll see how long he can hang on for, and if he won it, lovely,” Feek said.
“He acts very well on a sharp track. I think he will handle the Valley easily and if he gets a soft lead with 53kg he’ll be there in the last 200m.”
David Feek, who is currently checking out the talent at the 2017 Karaka Yearling Sales in New Zealand, was training in partnership with David Brideoake before forming a professional relationship with his wife Coral.
“I trained in partnership with David Brideoake for five years and a couple of years ago we decided, myself and my wife, to go out on our own and we’ve now been training in partnership for almost a year out of Mornington,” Feek said.
“We have 25 horses in work at one time, which includes pre-training for one of the big city stables, and we’re gradually building our own numbers.”
Feek’s pride and joy was grey mare Lucciola, which originated in Perth where it won 10 races, before moving to Victoria in February 2015 where it won the Stony Creek Cup.
“We’ve had a bit of success since we started. We had a nice mare that came from Perth called Lucciola, which was a flag bearer for us for awhile and we had a winner in town and had several winners in the country,” Feek said.
“We’re aspiring to get to better places really.”
Feek’s background includes multiple training stints with European trainer Ed Dunlop who is famous for lining up champion stayer Red Cadeaux in multiple Melbourne Cup starts, and Feek says the experience gives him plenty of insight into the professional aspect of training.
“I was an assistant trainer to Ed Dunlop, I actually had two stints as his assistant – once back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, and before I joined David Brideoake I spent a year back with him in 2009,” Feek said.
“It’s nice to be around quality horses that are competing on the global stage.”
Feek was training with Dunlop when he was training privately for the late Sheikh Maktoum Al Maktoum, which gave Feek experience in dealing with some high-profile thoroughbreds.
“We were dealing with a lot of very well-bred horses. It gives you great insight and you gain further knowledge by just being able to see many different things during the day,” Feek said.
“Not just the training of the horses, but horses are routinely scoped, stomach scoped, x-rayed – just that sort of detail when you’re training for the Arabs allows you to learn from the veterinary side, as well as the day-to-day training.”
Feek, who also spent time around American racing stables, noted the differences when training in Europe and Australia.
“I think the training here, regardless of what distance your horse is competing over, you have to train them to have tactical speed so they can gain a position from the barriers,” Feek said.
“They also need to have a turn-of-foot to finish the race off, but the training is different from that sense and I quite like the way we give horses spells.
“In Europe we don’t, when we back them off they trot for about six weeks, although I think it’s getting more popular now to turn horses out in Europe.”