Last season’s Cairns Trainer’s Premiership winner Stephen Massingham will be looking to claim a home town feature race success when he sends Lady Damus out to contest the Lightning Handicap over the 950m scamper at Cairns on Saturday.
Whether there is any prophecy involved in the fact that the sire of the six-year-old mare is Nostradamus remains to be seen, but four wins out of her last six starts … two of which came over Saturday’s track and distance … make her well worth a second glance.
The Massingham runner was beaten out of the placings in her last start in the Open Lightning Handicap at Townsville two weeks ago. On that occasion she jumped as the $4 second favourite and finished 4.10 lengths behind the winner Russian Mint, a Lindsay Hatch trained runner, over the 1000m trip. These runners will clash again on Saturday.
Lady Damus carried one kilo overweight on that occasion for the services of jockey Sean Cormack, and she will again carry half-a-kilo overweight on Saturday with Cormack in the saddle but, in spite of that, Lady Damus will face the starter with a favourable 1,5kg turnaround at the weights with Russian Mint.
That weight relief and the shorter trip could combine to be a telling factor in the outcome.
Russian Mint has only raced over 950m once where he finished a close-up runner-up to Lady Damus when he carried 1lg more than the Nostradamus mare … similar to the challenge he will face with Lady Damus on Saturday.
It is a field of twelve runners though, and three other runners appeal as horses capable of running into contention.
The Trevor and Peter Rowe trained Loud Noise finished second to Russian Mint in that Townsville Lightning Handicap. He was 2,58 lengths behind Russian Mint. They raced at level weights.
Loud Noise is now1kg better off with Russian Mint and half-a-kilo worse off with Lady Damus.
Lady Damus and Russian Mint are both six-year-olds. Loud Noise is a nine-year-old. In the credit column, Loud Noise has won over the 950m distance.
Winning form is good form, as they say, so pencil in the Georgie Holt trained Time To Prophet for consideration.
Time To prophet is only a four-year-old with obvious scope for improvement, particular when acknowledging the way she has stepped up to the plate to land successive wins in her last two starts.
The first of those wins came over 1000m, followed by a success over 1200m. Taking that increase in distance in her stride might suggest that Time To Prophet could be disadvantaged coming back to 950m, but the top of her might not have been reached yet, so it becomes a case of whether she is given the benefit of the doubt, or not.
And the last runner under serious consideration is Missile Thunder. An eleven-time winner from thirty-three starts (what a great strike-rate) that statistic speaks for itself, but it comes with a top weight allocation of 61kg, a very steadying burden.
This means Missile Thunder will have to give all of eleven opponents between 4kg and 7kg at the weights, or, perhaps more to the point will have to give Lady Damus 6.5kg and Russian Mint 6kg.
Against the odds or not, Missile Thunder will be bidding for back-to-back wins in the race.
He won it last year carrying 56.5kg when in the care of Roy Chillemi. He will go into Saturday’s race trained by Fred Wieland.
