NEIL Dyer's pursuit of a fourth Darwin Cup win could provide the Kyneton trainer with a surprise bonus.
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A recent acquisition for the Dyer stable, Kaonic finds himself among the 83 nominations for the third edition of the $5 million All-Star Mile, to be run at Moonee Valley in March.
The six-year-old Savabeel gelding was formerly trained by Chris Waller, but was purchased by Dyer on behalf of clients a few months ago.
A winner of six of 31 starts, including one at Listed race level at Flemington on 2018 Melbourne Cup day, Kaonic is facing a tough battle to gain entry into the field, with 23 Group 1 winners among this week's final entries, headed by last year's Caulfield Cup winner Verry Elleegant and Cox Plate winner Sir Dragonet.
Also back for a crack at the $5 million feature is the star mare Arcadia Queen, who won a pair of Group 1s last spring for his Western Australian trainers Grant and Alana Williams, while based at Brent Stanley's Cloud 9 Thoroughbreds in Sutton Grange.
The first 10 places in the 15-horse field will be determined by a public vote, which opens next week.
A further five spots will be allocated through a combination of two 'win and you're in' races and The All-Star Mile wildcard panel.
While Dyer insists the Darwin Cup in July remains Kaonic's number one priority, the chance to nominate for the $5 million feature, to be run on March 13, was an opportunity to good to pass up.
"We bought him with the Darwin Cup in mind off one of Chris Waller's clients," he said.
"We'd kept an eye on him (Kaonic) for a while, my son James spotted him.
"He wasn't for sale, but we approached the owner and ended up purchasing him.
"We had to put the nomination in for the All-Star Mile pretty quickly, otherwise it wasn't going to happen.
"We'll just go along and see how we go. If it's possible and the horse is going alright, we'll try our utmost to get him in it, but our first option was the Darwin Cup.
"If it does no harm to the horse and doesn't muck up our progress towards the Darwin Cup, it may be possible.
"He's not hopeless by any stretch, he won a Listed race during the spring carnival a couple of years ago and has won over $400,000."
Kaonic is yet to have a start for Dyer and finished fifth in his last race for his previous connections at Doomben in October.
Dyer, who missed the winter Darwin Cup Carnival last year for the first time in 12 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, said he had few regrets in doing so.
"It wasn't that bad, I had a few projects at home I needed to do around the stables like the swimming pool and we're putting the treadmill in at the moment," he said.
"It's been a good opportunity to get stuck into that sort of stuff - we've got a lot done.
"But I'd love to go back again this year for a couple of months and have another go.
"I used to take all the horses I had in work to Darwin and basically closed up for a few months down here, but by the time you got home from Darwin, nearly all of them were ready for a spell, which meant you were out of work for a few months.
"This year, (son) James will stay home and we'll keep operating down here with a few jumpers and six or seven flat horses and keep the foot on the accelerator.
"I definitely don't want to drop off the perch down here."
Sixty per-cent of Kaonic's new ownership is from the Northern Territory, which could prove beneficial once voting for the All-Star Mile opens.
As the only central Victorian-trained horse in the mix, Dyer hopes he can count on plenty of support from his hometown of Kyneton and of course Bendigo.
His thinking is not without merit.
In the lead-up to the first edition of the All-Star Mile, Penny To Sell, who during her career was trained at both Kyneton and Bendigo by Mick Sell, garnered enough support to finish among the top 20 votegetters.
Dyer, who has 18 horses in work at Kyneton, is clearly excited by Kaonic's potential.
"This All-Star Mile, we'll roll with it if the horse is alright and we'll go through the motions and put in the votes," he said.
"He'd already had a couple of months off when we got him and he had another month off when he got home, but he's been back in work now for a month.
"He's a lovely horse ... just oozes class. He was a 96-rater at his last start, so he's earned the points to be involved.
"We just hope there's another couple of years in him at a good level, then we can all have a bit of fun."
All-Star Mile voting will get underway on January 22, with the top 10 vote-getters to be revealed on February 19.
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