David Pfieffer is banking on a return to the scene of Gai Choice’s only Group One placing to help the mare rediscover winning form.
Gai’s Choice will continue a spring campaign that has yet to deliver anything worthwhile in Sydney or Melbourne when she runs in a Listed race for fillies and mares at Eagle Farm on Saturday.
Pfieffer is hoping the excursion north will revive the mare’s campaign fortunes.
His thinking is based on the genuinely-run nature of Brisbane races and the dimensions of a racetrack he says will assist Gai’s Choice’s racing style.
“Brisbane races are notorious for being fast-run races and Gai’s Choice is at her best when she can get back and run on,” Pfieffer said.
“Being a set-weights race over 1200 metres on a big track, it adds up to suiting her down to the ground.”
Gai’s Choice was a late arrival during this year’s Queensland winter carnival but she left an immediate impression with her first stakes win in the Gai Waterhouse Classic at Ipswich.
Important as the result was for her future as a broodmare, it would have almost paled into insignificance if she had figured at the front instead of the back end of a three-way finish in the Group One Tattersall’s Tiara at Eagle Farm.
Pfieffer will import jockey Peter Robl for the ride in the $80,000 race which has also attracted more Sydney interest with the John O’Shea stable entering last-start winner Bound To Blush.
Like Gai’s Choice, Bound To Blush has been to the barrier trials since her latest visit to the races.
“Without knowing a lot about the Brisbane form, Bound To Blush looks the one we have to beat,” Pfieffer said.
