Extra weight is the main thing standing between Panuara and a home-track victory on Monday afternoon, which will be his last start before Orange trainer Alison Smith gives him a spell.
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The seven-year-old will finish this prep at Towac on Monday, and will lug the top weight of 61 kilograms in the Orange Vet Hospital Benchmark 66 Handicap (1000 metres).
Gary Portelli's Estrado, Wayne Hudd's Gundy and Clint Lundholm's Tuncoona are all in the feild and will pose big threats, but Smith explained she and her team elected not to claim on their in-form sprinter anyway.
You'd take him home and sleep with him he's that cuddly.
- Alison Smith, of Panuara
The top weight isn't much more than Panuara carried in his last-start win at Wellington - he had 59.5kg that afternoon - but Smith did concede it will make life a touch more difficult, he also steps out another 100 metres from that victory.
"We decided we wouldn't claim. Having the extra weight will be the key factor if he can go the whole way," she said.
However, she said he'd been "ultra-consistent", not just in the past few months but across his whole time in Smith's stable.
Along with that win earlier this month Panuara's also run for two second finishes and fourth in his last five starts, all of those coming over the same 1000-metre trip he'll tackle at Towac Park.
Panuara's run from wide in recent starts and Smith is always impressed as the gelding will "find a spot anywhere", but drawing the inside lane in barrier will still be a benefit though.
"Pop him everywhere, generally sits back and if he's good enough then he's good enough," she said.
His last spell was the middle of winter across June and July and Smith said the time was coming to recharge the batteries ahead of Spring.
"You'd love to have a whole stable full of him," Smith said.
"He's the quietest horse in the stable, he's really easy to train and you know you're going to get 110 [per cent] from him."
Although he's a horse Smith describes as the "softest" in the stable, Panuara sent the trainer to hospital earlier this year, literally and metaphorically blindsiding the Orange trainer with a kick to the face.
"You'd take him home and sleep with him he's that cuddly," she said of Panuara's temperament.
"I took him around the back to give him some grass and he reared up and gave me a kick, no idea what it was."
Smith suffered a broken nose and fractured eye socket as a result but recovered well.
The Orange Vet Hospital Benchmark 66 Handicap is the fifth on Racing Orange's Welcome Back To Towac meeting, and jumps at 4.20pm.
Max Stainkamph
Max joined the CWD in September 2017, leaving the big smoke of Melbourne to come to Orange, where he stayed until 2020.
Max joined the CWD in September 2017, leaving the big smoke of Melbourne to come to Orange, where he stayed until 2020.
