Trainer Joe Pride is confident that Steps In Time will recover from a bruised heel in time to be fit for the Group 1 $500,000 Sky Racing Tattersall’s Tiara (1400m) at Eagle Farm on June 21.
Steps In Time, yellow and brown, holds off Sweet Idea, brown, to win the Coolmore Classic. Photo by Steve Hart.
Pride was forced to scratch Steps In Time from the Group 1 $400,000 Schweppes All Aged Stakes (1400m) at Randwick last Saturday morning after the Group 1 winning mare showed signs of soreness in her one of her hind heels.
“Some bruising on her hind heels so she is just not comfortable enough this morning and I am not going to risk a mare of her value when she is not one hundred per cent,” Pride told Racing HQ Saturday on Saturday morning.
But Pride has seven weeks to get Steps In Time right for the Group 1 race for the fillies and mares during the Brisbane Winter Carnival and can’t see a problem having the Danehill Dancer mare fit enough for the tough 1400m at Eagle Farm.
“She will have two weeks off,” Pride told AAP.
“The Tatt’s Tiara is seven weeks away so that gives us time to get her ready. She will have a barrier trial and go there for her final race.”
The Tattersall’s Tiara gives Steps In Time a chance to add another Group 1 win to her resume before she heads off to stud at the end of the season.
Pride got almost instant success with Steps In Time when he took over her preparation from John O’Shea for her Autumn Carnival campaign.
First up for the Pride stable, Steps In Time was beaten a nose by the Chris Waller trained Catkins but aided by a daring front running ride by Jim Cassidy, the six year old mare was able to hold off the fasting Sweet Idea to win the Group 1 $600,000 Coolmore Classic (1500m) at Rosehill on March 22 at her next start.
Pride then freshened her up for the 1200m Group 1 $2.5m Darley T J Smith Stakes at Randwick on April 12, the first day of ‘The Championships’, but the mare found the top class field of sprinters too nippy for her and she was a well beaten thirteenth on the heavy track behind Lankan Rupee.
“She has achieved the goal we really wanted to get with her in winning a Group 1, winning the Coolmore,” Pride said.
Steps In Time will be making her third trip to Brisbane and Pride is looking for a better result than her previous two attempts in the Tattersall’s Tiara after she finished twelfth in 2011 behind Yosei and thirteenth to Red Tracer last year.
Steps In Time has earned just over $1 million in prizemoney with nine wins and four placings from twenty-six starts.
