'I'll celebrate with a VB': Vella out to enjoy hard-earned thirst ahead of $1m event

In fact, the Canberra trainer loves it so much he decided to name a horse after his favourite drink.

So when a young gelding entered his stable, he came up with the name Vee Bee. It was a fitting tribute and, he hoped, subtle enough to not raise any eyebrows.

The racing regulators, however, had other ideas and promptly rejected the name. Ever resourceful, the trainer had a new idea to sneak past the suits in Sydney and the horse was named Vella's Best. Or, as he quickly became known, VB.

"I'm a VB drinker, I've always wanted a horse racing as a VB," Vella said. "His name should've been Vee Bee but they said I can't have that so I had to come up with another name and Vella's Best was next.

"It's good to have a horse in the feature races. If we can get him in the Black Opal, I'll celebrate with a VB."

Vella's Best will line up for his debut race in Friday's Black Opal Preview, with the trainer looking to book a place in next month's $250,000 feature.

A host of Sydney's biggest stables will travel to Canberra for the race, with Gerald Ryan and Sterling Alexiou's $400,000 yearling Amzaing Eagle the early favourite after finishing second last start at Randwick.

Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott will send Enter The Dragon down the highway, with the co-trainers looking to extend a dominant two-year-old campaign.

The stable has swept the early season features and they have their eyes on Canberra's biggest race.

"This was a race we had targeted for Enter The Dragon with the Black Opal in mind going forward," Bott said. "That was the reason he came down to Canberra for his maiden. He was very good on that occasion ... we think he's capable of more than what we saw on that day and hopefully we see that on Friday.

"He was quite raw in that first run and we want to see improvement under race conditions. The level of improvement will give us a great picture of how he falls in regards to other two year olds and the types of races we can target."

Friday's preview day is the final warm up before the ACT's first $1 million raceday on Sunday March 10.

The Black Opal and Canberra Cup will be held on a bumper 10-race card, with local trainers gearing up for a slice of the lucrative prize money.

For Vella, it's another sign the sport is recovering after a tough few years in the ACT.

"It's going to be an interesting meeting," Vella said. "The Black Opal and Canberra Cup should always be on the same day so I'll be very happy to be part of the raceday.

"The sport is going well but it would be good to get our trainers back. We lost a few trainers due to workers comp so it would be lovely to get them all back and get the stables filled again."