Brenton Avdulla has gone on the front foot to twitter to defend his beaten ride on grey flash Chautauqua in The Everest at Randwick on Saturday.
The multiple Group I winning sprinter was never a threat to winner Redzel when he sat back last with Avdulla electing to plot an inside path in the straight to try to storm home.
Chautauqua charged home but finished fourth and was beaten by a length and a half by Redzel.
Avdulla was feeling the heat from critics of his ride on social media and was keen to defend his tactics.
"I have copped a lot of criticism about my ride on Chautauqua yesterday so here are my thoughts and reasons about the race and my ride," Avdulla tweeted.
"(The) rail position out 6m made it difficult to swoop wide.
"(The) track was too hard ... Chautauqua hasn't won on a firm surface in Australia since 20/02/2016.
"The horse settled where he usually does every run and I was really happy with the rhythm he was in.
"Vega Magic not going forward took the speed out of the race and it was always going to be difficult for us to win from back there once that happened.
"I had English to my outside the entire trip so the only way to get outside was lose momentum and come around her which is a negative for the grey and a negative for how the track played."
The six-time Group 1 winner clocked the fastest last 600m for The Everest and now is likely to push on to next month's Group I Darley Classic (1200m) at Flemington.
