Before this morning’s Magic Millions Classic barrier draw on the Gold Coast Kelso Wood described the result as ‘very crucial’ towards the hopes of Sizzling in the $2 million event.

The Queensland horse caused a sensation with his first up victory blowing away his rivals by a massive margin and storming into Magic Millions favouritism.

Since then however he’s been handed two defeats after spotting the leaders too much ground and leaving himself too much to do down the straight.

Both times he flew home quickest of the lot to run into second spot but it was his gate speed that was going to be the question mark going into this weekend..

Wood has always maintained the horse isn’t sluggish from the stalls and that bad alleys have forced his hand to settle at the back.

“I’m quite sure he can be in touch, the last two starts he’s got back but it’s only been because of bad barriers,” Wood said.

He said if he drew a better marble for this Saturday we could expect him to be closer to the pace and after coming up with gate six there’s no excuses should that not happen.

Race favourite Driefontein is an on pace runner and given that he came up with alley three on paper Sizzling should get a fantastic trail into the race.

If that happens Wood can see no reason why his horse won’t win as he’s just as strong if not stronger than last time out.

“He’s a very tough horse, he’s improved after every run I think,” Wood said.

“His run the other day was enormous, he beat the rest of them by five lengths or something like that.”

Since then he’s been given a pretty easy time of it as Wood tries to preserve that blistering sprint that’s undoubtedly the best in the field from what we’ve seen.

“He had a gallop on Saturday, he had a gallop this morning and that’ll do him,” he said.