Thursday, August 26, 2010

2010 Spring Racing Season – Week 5 – Golden Rose & Memsie Stakes

Typhoon Tracy - photo by Jenny Evans/The Age
The first Group One of the 2010 spring racing season will be run at Rosehill this Saturday. The Golden Rose is a race for three year olds over 1400 metres. It was won by Denman last year, who went on to dominate races in the autumn until his defeat in the Australian Guineas and subsequent exportation to the UK, where he never got to the racetrack. He’s now headed for a stud career, so we won’t see him race again, mores the pity.

This year’s field is a classy one, with top colts Squamosa, Masquerader, Toorak Toff and Hinchinbrook squaring off against talented fillies Solar Charged, Crystal Lily, Chance Bye, Sasa and Panipique. Hard to pick a winner here, but Squamosa probably has the edge, being unbeaten in all three of his starts. He has drawn an outside barrier, which may give one of the other runners a chance to snatch victory.

The race of the day however will be the Group Two Memsie Stakes at Caulfield. Also run over 1400 metres, it has a whiz banger of a field comprising nine Group One winners in a field of fourteen, most notably Typhoon Tracy and So You Think taking on current star performer Shoot Out.

My loyalties will be torn watching this race, hoping on the one hand for a Typhoon Tracy victory, and wanting Shoot Out to continue his winning streak on the other. Perhaps they’ll dead heat like the outcome of the Australian federal election.

As well as So You Think, Bart Cummings has entered his star mare Faint Perfume, stayers Moatize and Brightnight, and old middle distance trooper Sirmione. Whobegotyou begins his spring campaign in this race too.

The track most probably will be rated slow – it has rained quite a bit this week. We know that Shoot Out has no trouble handling the wet, nor does Typhoon Tracy. It may be a worry for So You Think, who was scratched from the Liston for that reason. Whobegotyou is known to be averse to heavy going as well which brightens the prospects of my two favoured runners in what will surely be a tough competition. Go Tracy! Go Shoot Out!

Glad tidings! More Joyous is back in the Listed Sheraco Stakes at Rosehill this Saturday. She has been missing from the racing scene for a while after being spelled early in the autumn racing season.

Makybe Diva’s boy Rockstardom competed in his debut race at Geelong on Tuesday. He managed to run fourth; not a bad effort for a stayer in a short race. He’s a lovely looking horse and apparently has a beautiful happy nature. Hopefully he’ll go on to greater things as his career progresses. For a start, he’s being set for the Victoria Derby in October.

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