Exotique Miss, originally a first emergency for the Group 1 Tatts Tiara, is now in the race on the back of the scratching of Adiella. It is a case of one Toowoomba based runner replacing another Toowoomba based horse.
“We obviously know how strong these races are with all these fillies trying to get a Group 1 at the end of the season. We get all that,” said trainer Michael Nolan, “but this (the Tiara) is what we planned as the last run of the campaign, obviously, if we warranted getting into the field.
“When we won first-up at Eagle Farm we thought, oh that was good. Then Silk Stocking day the track was a heavy 10, so you couldn’t read too much into that … but our next two runs were very good and that had us thinking … oh well, we are the first emergency and we can go to the Tatts Mile if we don’t get into the Tiara.
“Something happened to John Dann’s horse (Adiella) at the trot-ups and, all of a sudden, we’ve got a run.
“That was unfortunate turn of events for John. For us, we went from thinking we might not get a run to getting a run … and that was like, wow!”
Rachel King, who was on the mare in her last two starts, will be in the saddle again on Saturday.
“I had called Rachel’s manager to ask, what about the Tatts Tiara. He said give them twenty-four hours to think about it … and he then came back and said if we do go that way, Rachel was quite keen to stay on her. That gave us a bit of confidence. Now we will roll the dice and have a go,” continued Nolan.
“We think we have the horse in good shape. She probably wasn’t in as good a shape last winter. She is just a bigger, stronger mare this time around.
“We are just local blokes, and the horse isn’t particularly fashionably bred or anything like that, but we are in it now.
“It would be something if we brought that Group 1 back to Toowoomba.”
In her four runs this preparation Exotique Miss won a BM85 over 1200m first-up. She then finished sixth in the Listed Silk Stocking but finished only 1.50 lengths behind the much-vaunted Floozie … it is worth noting that Exotique Miss carried 3.5kg more than Floozie that day … and, in her last two starts, Exotique Miss finished third in the Group 3 Pam O’Neill and fourth in the Magic Millions National Classic when only 0.49 lengths and 1.87 lengths back respectively.
On that evidence, Exotique Miss is certainly not in the Tiara to make up the numbers.
She clearly warrants her place in the field and you would expect her to be thereabouts when the race gets serious halfway up the straight.
The one certainty is that Exotique Miss’s part-owner Chris Tait’s fully committed cheering from the grandstand as he urges his horse along and tries to channel the racing gods to bend to his will, will be a show of solid Group 1 level support.
Exotique Miss is currently a $34 chance on Swiftbet.
