A possible travel fatigue from his brief Hong Kong excursion or fading motivation might account for Royal Patronage’s subpar spring showing.
Launching into autumn, co-trainer Adrian Bott decided a routine overhaul for the seven-year-old stallion would help refocus him, and conveniently, his talented wife and horse expert, Jess, stepped up.
“My wife has done a lot of work with him. A lot of flat work and dressage work,” Bott said.
“She is very good at that side of things and working with them.
We’ve tried as much as we can to refresh his training and mindset and his approach to it all and he seems back having confidence in himself.
So I can’t take credit.”
Unchanged as a stallion, Royal Patronage was snapped up by Western Australia’s Darling View Thoroughbreds, which maintains a compact lineup featuring Playing God.
Should Saturday’s All Aged Stakes (1400m) at Randwick mark his retirement run, Bott anticipates Royal Patronage will depart on a high.
“His biggest runs in Australian have been first-up,” he said.
“Sometimes it is hard to go against that depth of field first-up, against some that are deep into their campaigns and have had the runs and are fitter.
But you fall back and look at his record, and that’s when he has performed really well and in that distance range as well. He can be effective.”
Royal Patronage has three fresh wins from six goes, including his standout Group 1 capture in the previous Canterbury Stakes (1300m).
In the All Aged, he starts from gate six with Tim Clark riding.
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