Victoria Cup win for NZ Cup-bound Rock N Roll Doo

By Adam Hamilton 

Look out New Zealand … here comes Rock N Roll Doo.

What at first seemed an ambitious plan to raid the NZ Cup now looks an inspired plan after Rock N Roll Doo’s dominant and powerhouse Group 1 Victoria Cup win last night.

It takes a special horse to sit parked and win a race like the Victoria Cup and that’s just what Rock N Roll Doo did.

“We’ve now big feature races at his past two starts with the plugs in and running right through the line,” trainer-driver Mick Stanley said.

“We think he’s something special and we’ve been telling anyone who would listen for the past 12 months.

“We deliberated skipped the Queensland winter races to aim at this back part of the year and give him time to develop and it’s paid off.”

Easing favourite Expensive Ego worked around to take the lead from Better Eclipse which left Rock N Roll Doo parked, Honolua Bay in the one-one and Copy That three pegs.

Rock N Roll Doo had Expensive Ego beaten on the home bend and easily held-off Honolua Bay, Better Eclipse and Copy That to win easily in a 1min54sec mile rate for 2240m and closing splits of 54.4 and 26.8sec.

Owner Brendan James can’t wait to get to NZ.

“This is really special, to win the style he did outside the leader was amazing,” he said.

“He’s definitely going to NZ. You can see now why we’ve wanted to go.

“He’s such a great stayer and we think he’ll be a huge chance if he runs up to his top.”

Rock N Roll Doo is trying to become just the second Aussie-trained pacer since My Lightning Blue in 1987 to win the NZ Cup. The other was Arden Rooney in 2015.

Copy That’s run was terrific even though he had a soft run three back on the pegs.

He hit the line strongly, just missed third spot and showed he was back on target for the NZ Cup.

Ray Green confirmed Copy That is booked on a flight back to NZ on Thursday.