Down in Melbourne, the McKenzie Stakes (Race 5) over 1200m is the feature event on the Moonee Valley card with a couple of impressive first-start winners pitted against each other.
The calibre of opposition may have been questionable but it was impossible to ignore the debut win of Ken’s Dream at Echuca after he donkey-licked them by a whopping nine lengths to put himself right in the frame for this.
While Danny O’Brien, who had a day to savour at Caulfield last Saturday after Miss Rose de Lago took out the feature event, saddles up Verstappen, who motored away from the rest of the field on the synthetic track at Pakenham to score a nice win on debut.
With those two horses capturing most of the punter’s attention, Ciaron Maher’s Throssell (pictured above) has almost been relegated to afterthought status despite boasting a perfect two from two record and off a recent trial win, he may represent some value to serve it up to the leading pair.
