Warwick Farm trainer Joe Pride’s three runners will relish the wet conditions that look likely to be served up in the Group 1 $2.5m Darley T J Smith Stakes (1200m) at Randwick on Saturday.
Joe Pride considers See The World, above, to be well over the odds in the T J Smith Stakes. Photo by Steve Hart.
The Randwick track is currently rated a slow 7 and with more rain expected on Friday, another Autumn Carnival heavy track is on the cards for the first day of ‘The Championships’.
But Pride is not perturbed and is giving his three runners, Tiger Tees (Nash Rawiller), See The World (Christian Reith) and Steps In Time (Blake Shinn) all excellent chances on the rain affected track.
“I can find a reason to say they are all going to run well,” Pride told AAP.
“Probably the best-performed at the moment is Steps In Time and I think she’s going super but I don’t take anything away from the other two’s chances.
“And especially once we start looking at a real wet track, they start coming right into it.”
Pride’s three runners are all at healthy double figure odds at Ladbrokes.com.au with Steps In Time the most fancied at $17, Tigers Tees at $26 with See The World the longest priced at $51.
Pride considers See The World well over the odds and expects the seven year old to run a mighty race after the owners paid the $55,000 late entry fee to include him in the field after striking trouble when seventh to stablemate Tiger Tees in the Group 1 $400,000 Bloodstock.com.au Galaxy (1100m) at Rosehill on March 29.
“They’ve got his price wrong … he’ll run out of his skin,” Pride said.
“In the Galaxy he lost a front shoe and he got galloped on. He lost the race at the start and was never going to make up the ground.”
See The World has three wins on the slow and one on the heavy while Tiger Tees handled the wet conditions in the Galaxy to perfection to take his wet track record to three wins on the slow and one on the heavy.
Steps In Time broke through for her initial Group 1 success in the $600,000 Coolmore Classic (1500m) at Rosehill on March 22 on a good track, but her record shows a win and a third on a the slow.
Trainer Mick Price’s latest sprinting sensation Lankan Rupee has been posted the $3.80 favourite for the T J Smith Stakes following his two Group 1 wins during the Melbourne Autumn Carnival in the $400,000 Sportingbet Oakleigh Plate (1100m) at Caulfield and the $1m Lexus Newmarket Handicap (1200m) at Flemington.
The Robert Heathcote trained Buffering is the next in the betting at $6 in front of Irish sprinter Gordon Lord Byron at $8 and Chris Waller’s glamour three year old Zoustar at $11.
