Trainer Peter Snowden will wait as long as possible this week before committing Shooting To Win to either the Royal Randwick Guineas in Sydney or the Australian Guineas in Melbourne.
Shooting To Win will accept in the Royal Randwick Guineas at Randwick and the Australian Guineas at Flemington. Photo by Race Horse Photos Australia.
The programming of the two 1600m Group 1 races for the three year olds for this Saturday has created a nightmare for trainers and Snowden is keeping his options open as long as he can.
Final fields for both the Group 1 $600,000 Royal Randwick Guineas (1600m) at Randwick and the Group 1 $500,000 Australian Guineas (1600m) at Flemington will be released on Wednesday and Snowden will accept for both.
“I’ll talk to the owners and see what their thoughts are but I’d say at this stage we’ll accept for both races,” Snowden told racing.com.
Snowden, who trains in partnership with his son Paul, said the stable is leaning towards a start at Randwick but the barrier draw and the weather would be a telling factor in the final decision.
“More than likely he’ll stay in Sydney but if the weather turned bad, or he drew a bad gate then we could change our mind so I want to leave our options open,” Snowden said.
“My priority is to stay in Sydney because naturally with the program he has it saves coming to Melbourne for the one run but I wouldn’t completely rule it out.”
Snowden has no fears of Shooting To Win handling the Melbourne way of going after the Northern Meteor colt scored the biggest win of his career when he took out the Group 1 $1m BECK Caulfield Guineas (1600m) at Caulfield during the 2014 Spring Carnival.
Shooting To Win kicked off his Autumn Carnival campaign with a solid fourth to Hallowed Crown in the Group 2 $200,000 Blackwoods CRC Hobartville Stakes (1400m) at Rosehill on February 21 and Snowden has been pleased with his progress since.
“His work’s been great and he’s taken really good improvement from that first-up run,” Snowden said.
“His condition only gave out over the last eighty metres but he’s come on since then and going to the mile second-up I think he’s going to run really well.
“He showed last time in that he just improves with racing and he’s a bit more forward than in the Spring and I expect him to hit peak fitness a lot sooner this time.”
The Snowdens are riding on a high after the father-son combination scored their second Group 1 win since launching their training partnership in May 2014 when two year old Pride Of Dubai won the $1m Blue Diamond Stakes (1200m) at Caulfield last Saturday.
Shooting To Win is currently on the second line of betting at $3.20 for the Royal Randwick Guineas with Ladbrokes.com.au behind the Bart and James Cummings trained Hallowed Crown at $3.
While in Australian Guineas betting Shooting To win is marked as an $11 chance behind the Chris Waller trained Kermadec at $3.80, Disposition at $6.50, Alpine Eagle at $7 and Wandjina at $8.
