Black Piranha

With the dominance of Black Caviar in the BTC Cup not a lot was mentioned about Black Piranha or indeed any of the other back markers.

Obviously they’re well and truly outclassed by the great mare but with her out of the picture in this weekend’s Doomben 10,000 the door is well and truly ajar.

Black Piranha worked home well in the closing stages of the BTC Cup and trainer Con Karakatsanis was content with the run as he builds towards his target race, the Stradbroke Handicap.

That’s not saying he won’t be a threat this Saturday though and he’s certainly in the race to win it.

There are nine horses in the Doomben 10,000 field and Black Piranha will jump from four with the favourite Hay List in two.

“A barrier for my bloke isn’t a great concern because he’s a back marker and I’ve got the best rider going around at the moment Hugh Bowman,” he said.

The only concern Karakatsanis does have is that his track work plans were heavily disrupted by the Gold Coast Turf Club.

“I’m a bit disappointed that I wasn’t provided with the grass,” he said.

“Doomben had 15 horses gallop on it and they had just as much rain up there as we had down here.

“I had to work him on the velvet track which was probably just a little bit below par.

“Going into a Group 1 you want to make your final gallop the most counting one.”

He certainly won’t be using it as an excuse though and he’s expecting the majority of the improvement to have come out of the BTC Cup run.

“The way the BTC Cup was run really suited him because it was a slowly run race and only really a sprint home from the 600,” he said.

“He’s pulled up well and coming into this Saturday you can’t count him out, he’s won two Group 1’s and run four Group 1 seconds.”

Black Piranha is deep in the betting markets for the 2011 Doomben 10,000 with Hay List one of the shortest priced favourites of the modern era.

One of Con Karakatsanis’s other popular horses New Alert will not be seen at all during the Brisbane Winter Carnival.

“He’s gone to the paddock, he jarred his nearside joint in the Prime Minister’s Cup,” he said.

“We’re doing the right thing by the horse, he means a lot to me.

He has no doubts New Alert will make a full recovery considering he overcame the most serious of infections just last year.

“He’s probably one of the toughest horses I’ve had anything to do with, he probably should have been dead 12 months ago,” he said.