IN the seconds just after the clock hits 1:28pm on Saturday at Rosehill, Rupert Legh knows he’ll either be a champ or a chump and the future of a modern superstar will be decided.

Legh is the leading part-owner of Chautauqua, the five-time Group 1 winning barrier rogue who could be banned from racing if he doesn’t jump in a specially organised trial in between races in Sydney.

Connections of the grey flash have earned scorn for continuing to send their eight-year-old gelding to trial after trial, because six times he has stood still when the gates opened, looking disinterested, leading to Saturday’s now or never moment.

There’s been no common denominator in the failures to launch either, only that they were all early morning trials. So Legh, and the Hawkes training team, have embarked on a behind the scenes quest to unlock the key to Chautauqua’s racing genius, a genius which produced more than one epic performance.

They have found plenty of allies too, from other trainers, people in racing, who can see through those arguing that “he clearly doesn’t want to race”.

“All other people in the industry, other trainers, are encouraging me to keep going down this path. But (stewards) are listening to what I could call uninformed people making commentary without knowing what I know and seeing what I see,” Legh said this week.

“Up at the farm you see a very happy, healthy racehorse.

“I think it’s disrespectful to (trainer) John Hawkes, too. He would never, ever do the wrong thing by any of his horses. He’s a Hall of Fame trainer. You have to respect his decisions. If John said to me, ‘Rupe, I think he’s had enough,’ then so be it. But that’s just not the case.”

At least Legh think’s it’s not the case. He has owned dozens of horses, winners of major races, millions of dollars, and said “no-one is a bigger horse lover than me”.

Stretch that to all animals in facts.

“I wouldn’t step on an ant,” Legh said.

That’s why he’s confident his decision, supported by fellow owners and Hall of Fame trainer Hawkes, to keep sending Chautauqua back to the barrier trials, is what the horse wants.

He’s hoping this specially designed barrier trial, on a race day, in the afternoon, as opposed to all the early morning attempts, when Chautauqua, a winner of nearly $9 million in prizemoney, showed disdain for what he was being made to do, finally does the trick.

“They’ll take him there early, put him in his stall, walk him around, treat it like a normal race day,” Legh said.

“He has never, ever failed to jump from the barriers in a race. That’s part of our frustration, not with the horse, because he’s very single-minded, we know that, but more with the ruling.

“He’s going to be banned from racing if he doesn’t jump in a trial, even though he’s never not jumped in a raced.”

But that’s where we’ve landed, and Legh knows that just after 1:28pm on Saturday, after those gates fly open, he’ll either be a champ or a chump.

“I’m on a hiding to nothing,” Legh said. “If he jumps I won’t get any plaudits for what we’ve been doing, and I don’t want any. If he doesn’t jump, I’ll get whacked by those people who say he’s had enough.”

Chautauqua’s make-or-break barrier trial, which also includes Dixie Blossoms, Lean Mean Machine, Sambro, Tally, The Autumn Sun, Youngster and Zousain, will be televised live on Sky Thoroughbred Central.