Horse Racing The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – 6/8/2022

Racing NSW flexed their prizemoney muscle, a shock result in the Randwick feature while at Flemington, a veteran continued his love affair with the Flemington straight. All that and more in this weeks edition of ‘The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’.

KEY NEWS:

Prizemoney Injection For NSW Racing

Wednesday morning saw Racing NSW announced a $30m prizemoney increase, and while there is a big tick towards country races getting cash injection, the contentous issue is the significant boost in prizemoney to several sprint races leading into The Everest and following The Everest, with those races now being involved in the “Sydney Sprint Series”, sponsored by Sportsbet.

Empire Hard Tol Find In Missile Shock

Queensland veteran Hard Empire had a form line of 6070 leading into the Missile Stakes (1200m) at Randwick on Saturday, which is why he was $101+ in betting, but the newly turned nine year old wound back the clock with a strong finale from off the speed to claim the Group ll and send a few classy horses home with a bruise in the ego. The Team Edmonds trained gelding got the better of the Kris Lees trifecta of Wandabaa, Gem Song and Enchanted Heart.

Sirius Straight Performer Wins Aurie’s Star

Trainer Saab Hassan has never lost the faith with his stable star Sirius Suspect, and despite some patchy form not so long ago, he’s come back to his best with back-to-back wins at his favourite course, the Flemington straight six, the second win coming on Saturday in the Aurie’s Star where he led throughout and was very strong late in fending them off and win.

PERFORMANCE OF THE WEEK:

Not a horse related peformance this week. This week it goes to Leah Kilner and her incredibly positive attitude towards her recovery. Great images to see her at the races on Doomben on Saturday, surrounded by her fellow riders and mates. It’s been awesome to see her out and about and hopefully the road to recovery is a smooth one.

DEBUT OF THE WEEK:

I’m trying to work out who had the bigger flex on Wednesday. Was it Racing NSW or the Price/Kent team? They trained four winners at Geelong on Wednesday, with the best of those clearly being the first starter What You Need, who led throughout and won with real arrogance and authority. The stable thinks he’s very good, Ben Melham thinks so as well, so it will be interesting to see where he goes next.

RIDE OF THE WEEK:

The Flemington track today, it was clear early on that outside was best, so the steer from Mark Zahra aboard Veranskova was an absolute peach. Drew gate two, he immediately veered towards the outside and got as wide as he got, which was clearly the winning move, and the horse made a mess of them.

SLAUGHTER OF THE WEEK:

Couldn’t find a poor ride worthy.

HORSES TO FOLLOW:

Lord Desanimaux – He’s flying
Equation – Loomed to win, condition gave out. Follow
Marchioness – Sneaky flying she is
Hang Five – He’s in for a good prep

ONE MORE CHANCE:

Conqueror – Set a task, so be forgiving
Alcyone – Very one paced. Next start is D-Day
Makram – Too bad to be true surely
Fire – The Masked Crusader comparison chat can stop. Nice horse that can bounce back
Just Field – Race shape against, a total forgive

NEVER EVER AGAIN:

Hilal – Pretender
Embracer – Too hard to follow/trust
Quintello – End of prep run perhaps, but she was still very ordinary given the run she had
Grand Pope – He’s not city class at the moment
Real Sensation – Sucker for punishment if you back him