Tempo concerns are outweighing worries about the strength of the opposition for Grahame Begg as the Randwick trainer tries to plot a Queen Elizabeth Stakes upset with Secret Admirer.
Secret Admirer will follow Doncaster Mile heroine More Joyous into the weight-for-age feature on a seven-day turnaround, a racing pattern which has yielded career-best results for the mare.
“The two Group Ones she’s won have been on a seven-day back-up,” Begg said.”
Secret Admirer won the Flight Stakes as a spring three-year-old before claiming the 2011 Epsom Handicap off an identical preparation.
She will race at 2000m for only the second time in her career at Randwick on Saturday with her introduction to the middle distance resulting in a respectable return in last year’s Cox Plate with a fifth placing to Pinker Pinker.
With More Joyous, the 2010 Melbourne Cup winner Americain, rejuvenated import Manighar and New Zealand star Jimmy Choux set to run, the Queen Elizabeth has been compared to a Cox Plate field.
“Sure it’s a hot race but the only thing that worries me is that there will be no speed in it,” Begg said.
More Joyous’s stablemate Herculian Prince, a noted on-pace runner, has been nominated but it is unclear if the 2010 Metropolitan winner will start.
Secret Admirer finished eighth – 3-1/2 lengths behind More Joyous – in the Doncaster Mile but Begg said it would be unwise to judge her too harshly on the run.
“She had no luck because she was five wide, might have been six wide, facing the breeze all the way down the back straight,” he said.
“Everyone said she looked a bit dour but I don’t know if you can say that when you are sitting out there where she was without cover.
“You can’t do it at both ends. Her sectionals were still the third fastest of the race.”
Secret Admirer will be kept to light duties this week.
“She looks well and she’s done well since the run,” Begg said.
“(It will be) trot and canter this week, that’s all she has to do.
“We don’t need to do anything else. Just go steady … that’s all we’ve done every other year (when she’s backed up).”
Other Doncaster Mile runners nominated for the $500,000 race are Sincero (fourth) and the Victorian mare Absolutely (ninth)
Four mares are among the 12 Queen Elizabeth Stakes entries but their representation will be reduced by at least one with the Warwick Farm-trained Mirjulisa Lass saved for a support race.
“She’ll run in the Emancipation Stakes, it looks a much better option at this stage of her preparation,” trainer Greg Hickman said.
