A Sydney autumn Group One race has emerged as Anthony Cummings’s barometer for the immediate future of Missy Cummings, the well-tried favourite to extend her unbeaten sequence in the Inglis 3YO Guineas at Scone.
Cummings is buoyant about Miss Cummings beating her male rivals in the $500,000 race after analysing the figures from her James HB Carr Stakes victory against those returned from the All Aged Stakes, a weight-for-age race over the same distance on the same day.
“It sounds a bit dumb but on times and everything I probably made a mistake not putting her in the All Aged,” Cummings said.
“On the times she ran she would have been very competitive in that.”
Missy Cummings ran more than 0.5 seconds – or three lengths faster – than the All Aged winner, the brilliant colt All Too Hard.
If Cummings is ruing a missed opportunity, he’s not likely to dwell on it for too long as the result has only hastened his plans to send Missy Cummings into Group One competition before the end of the season.
He said there were Stradbroke Handicap and Tatt’s Tiara options for the filly who will be trying to stretch her undefeated run to four wins in the Guineas.
Cummings is well aware of a precedent involving the Guineas and the Stradbroke with Sincero completing the double in 2011.
But getting her into Queensland’s richest handicap race might be the issue.
“She wouldn’t be a good thing to get a start,” Cummings said.
“Equally there is the (Queensland) Guineas on the week before and she could go three weeks from there into the Tatt’s Tiara.
“It’s a more conservative path but I think that is quite achievable whereas if she had to go the Stradbroke that could be the end of her campaign.”
Missy Cummings, who has figured in an ownership transfer this week with the trainer selling the daughter of Magnus back to her breeder Robert Crabtree, has been heavily backed to win the Guineas.
She now holds a clear-cut call at top of the market, deposing Flying Snitzel as favourite at $4.
“The barrier (three) is a great help and in the bigger races that is where you want to be,” Cummings said.
Flying Snitzel has drawn directly inside Missy Cummings as she tries to rebound off a down-the-track effort in the Carbine Club Stakes over 1600m at Randwick.
Trainer Gerald Ryan has kept the filly fresh for her return to a distance that yielded a last-to-first Group Two Kewney Stakes win over Norzita, the subsequent Group One winner of the Vinery Stud Stakes and placegetter in the Doncaster.
