Group winner Tiger Of Malay will take his place in the Up And Coming Stakes, despite co-trainer Michael Freedman admitting the conditions of the race are not ideal.
The colt will carry 61kg in the 1300m quality handicap at Kembla Grange, three kilos more than his nearest weighted rival Subterranean and eight kilos more than the horses on the 53kg minimum.
While Freedman says the colt faces a tough task shouldering the impost, he hopes it will be offset by his rails draw and the booking of champion jockey James Mcdonald.
“Hopefully we’ll see him put in a nice performance. Whether he can lump that kind of weight and be a winning chance time will only tell, but it does set him up on the right leg to head for some nice options in the spring,” Freedman told Sydney’s Sky Racing radio.
“He’s a nice big, strong horse and he’s got an inside draw which will hopefully allow him to get a pretty economical run.
“With James McDonald to ride him, who is the best rider in Sydney, there’s a lot of things in his favour.”
Tiger Of Malay was competitive against some of Sydney’s better two-year-olds during the autumn, earning him a trip to Brisbane where he captured the Group 2 BRC Sires’ Produce Stakes (1400m) during the winter carnival.
He was also Group 1 placed behind Converge in the J J Atkins over a mile and Freedman is keen to see where he fits in as a spring three-year-old.
“Physically, he has developed a bit since his two-year-old season so I wouldn’t rule out the idea of having another crack at something over a mile, whether that’s the Guineas in Melbourne or not, we’ll wait and see,” Freedman said.
“I tend to think somewhere around that 1400 metre range is about his perfect range, which might bring certain races like the 2021 Golden Rose into calculations if his form warrants it.”
In a compact market, Tiger Of Malay was a $2.60 TAB fixed odds favourite on Thursday with the Hawkes Racing-trained Patton the longest-priced of the nine runners at $18.
