Brilliant last-start winner Kingdoms will take another step towards the Sydney spring carnival when he leads a three-pronged assault for trainer Brian Smith on Saturday’s Tattersall’s Mile.
Kingdoms is likely to start favourite but Smith’s other runners, Jetset Lad and Grey Assignment, will also have admirers.
The Tattersall’s Mile (1600m), the last Listed race of the Brisbane season, was run at Eagle Farm in the final week of July for many years.
However, the race has been switched to Doomben and moved forward by three weeks to attract the last of the visiting carnival horses.
Smith has been a consistently good performer this season with 26 city winners and is fourth on the Brisbane trainers’ premiership.
But he is best known as the trainer of the mighty kiwi galloper Balmerino who came to Queensland to win the 1976 Brisbane Cup and Grand Prix Stakes.
Smith arguably produced the training performance of the winter carnival when Kingdoms scored a first-up win in the Listed Mercedes Benz Centenary Mile (1600m) three weeks ago at his first start for the Eagle Farm trainer.
Kingdoms was formerly with John O’Shea in Sydney where he ran third to superstar It’s A Dundeel in the 2013 Australian Derby.
Smith, who is now in his early 70s, can’t hide his enthusiasm for Kingdoms.
“I had a few tried horses for (part owner) Michael O’Keeffe, like Cruz By and Southerly, and they won some races so he said he’d send me a good one,” Smith said.
“He has done just that with Kingdoms.”
Provided Kingdoms continues to please Smith in the coming weeks he will head to the Newcastle Cup and the Group One Metropolitan Handicap at Randwick.
Smith won the Newcastle Cup with Bickie Tin Blues in 2006.
Jetset Lad, who was originally trained by another kiwi in John Wheeler, will be aiming to break his Queensland duck on Saturday.
The gelding has made three visits to Queensland where he has had 12 starts without a win.
At his two runs for Smith he finished fourth in both the Eye Liner Stakes and the Glasshouse Handicap.
Grey Assignment hasn’t won for almost a year but Smith believes the gelding is back on track after running third in the Ipswich Cup last start.
