Joe Pride considers himself a pretty good judge of horse flesh and has his runners primed for the Hawkesbury feature meeting.
But the trainer admits to being challenged last week when he was assessing equestrian horses at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show.
“I was a judge at the show and it was a different experience,” Pride said.
“There was a wide variety of horses and different classes.”
Pride hopes Saturday’s Hawkesbury Guineas favourite Kylease does nothing different from her past three winning starts when she steps up to Group Three company.
The front-running filly ran second on debut at Warwick Farm in January but has not been headed since, breaking her maiden at Gosford the following month.
She won a benchmark 70 race on Randwick’s Kensington track in March and returned to Gosford on April 10 to win again.
While she has yet to race beyond 1250m, Pride does not think the 1400m will be a problem and he is more than convinced she is up to the class.
He has also compared her to Sacred Choice who he trained to win the 2010 Myer Classic and 2011 Doncaster Mile.
“Of course we don’t know if she’s going to be as good as her but she reminds me of Sacred Choice in terms of her toughness and resilience,” Pride said.
“We have some pretty big plans for her in the spring so hopefully she gets the job done on Saturday.”
One of two fillies in the Guineas field along with Eawase, Kylease was at $2.90 on race eve with Hawkes Racing’s Trope next on the TAB market at $4.20.
The Pride-trained Pecans is among the leading chances for the Hawkesbury Crown (1300m) which she won a year ago.
Pecans is up for auction at next week’s Chairman’s Sale and the Crown will be her final start for Tricolours Racing which bought the former Godolphin mare as a tried horse.
Pride’s other runner at the meeting is Tamarack who runs over 1500m as he begins a campaign aimed at winter staying races.
