He missed out in Sunday's western qualifier but Clint Lundholm has given himself one final chance of booking a spot in the $500,000 Country Championships Final.
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The Dubbo trainer has nominated Sipharderson for Sunday's Wild Card event, a race for all those Country Championships hopefuls who missed out in their respective heats.
Sipharderson was the best of the five hopes Lundholm had for the weekend's Western Racing Association qualifier at Coonamble and the five-year-old finished fifth behind the Kody Nestor-trained pair of Sneak Preview and Fast Talking.
Sipharderson is no certainty to gain a start in the Wild Card event - where the last two finalists will be confirmed - due to the sheer number of highly-rated nominations.
Sipharderson went to Coonamble with a benchmark rating of 65 while the Wild Card is headlined by Cody Morgan's Mahalangur and the Bernie Kelly-trained Bobbing, both currently with a rating of 100.
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Thirty-four nominations in total were put forward for the event.
Lundholm is the lone western are nominee, while the Central Districts trainers who threw their hat in the ring are Dean Mirfin and Roy McCabe of Bathurst, Mudgee's David Smith, and Brett Thompson of Gulgong.
Mirfin's Press Box and Smith's Bel Diablo are the highest rated of the group.
Press Box has contested the Kosciuszko and a Group 3 in the past but only managed a fifth-placed finish in the recent Central Districts heat at Mudgee.
Mirfin already has one finalist in Electrified, who finished second behind Gayna Williams' Healing Hands at Mudgee, but was always pointing Press Box towards the Wild Card after that race.
Bel Diablo ran eighth in that heat.
I Stole Your Love, the McCabe-trained outsider, finished a surprise fourth at Mudgee while Thompson's Smart Moove was tenth.
Final fields for the Wild Card meeting will be released on Thursday.
The meeting will be closed to the public in line with Racing NSW's rulings announced on Monday in regards to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
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Nick Guthrie
I started working at the Daily Liberal in 2013 and now hold the position of senior journalist. I cover all that's happening in sport in Dubbo and the wider western area and have a passion for doing so. If you've got a story that needs telling, reach out.
I started working at the Daily Liberal in 2013 and now hold the position of senior journalist. I cover all that's happening in sport in Dubbo and the wider western area and have a passion for doing so. If you've got a story that needs telling, reach out.
