Jason Warren has some decisions to make with his star sprinting mare Benedetta.
The Victorian trainer has not yet ruled out running the Group 1 winner in this Saturday’s $1 million Kingsford Smith Cup (1300m), which was postponed after last Saturday’s Eagle Farm meeting was called off early.
But if she does, it rules out the following Saturday’s Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap (1400m), for which the daughter of Hellbent is also a leading fancy.
“The conundrum for us now is it rules out one of the Group Ones that we had as a target,” Warren said of the change in schedule.
“The 1300 (on Saturday) would have been ideal, we were well-suited at the weights and well-placed.
“But I think it rules out one of the races. Essentially, we have to skip the Kingsford Smith now and go to the Stradbroke or skip the Stradbroke and to the Tatt’s Tiara, which that then impacts on your spring when you’re talking only a matter of weeks in the paddock.”
The 1400-metre Tattersall’s Tiara, a $700,000 Group 1 race restricted to fillies and mares, is Australia’s final Group 1 of the season, to be run at Eagle Farm on June 28.
If Warren elects to bypass the Kingsford Smith Cup, the five-year-old would have a maintenance trial in Queensland later in the week.
Wherever she does run next will be the sixth start of a campaign that started with a third placing in the Group 1 Black Caviar Lightning all the way back on February 15.
All five starts this year have been in Group 1 races with a William Reid Stakes (1200m) second placing to Schwarz the other top-three finish.
She was a luckless 10th in the Newmarket Handicap (1200m), finished fifth in the All Aged Stakes (1400m) and fourth in the Doomben 10,000 (1200m).
The Kingsford Smith Cup is one of two Group 1 races added to this Saturday’s Queensland Oaks card, which now also features the Queensland Derby and the Listed Helen Coughlan Stakes.
