Horse racing: Stablemate looms as threat to Champagne Stakes hot favourite

Solid Gold (left) is a filly on the rise who heads to the Rough Habit Plate in Brisbane tomorrow. Photo / Kenton Wright

That fact trainer Roger James thinks Incandescent can go close to beating stablemate Excite in the Champagne Stakes at Ellerslie tomorrow says a lot.

Because James and training partner Robert Wellwood are using tomorrow’s $100,000 race as a trial to head to Queensland for a Group 1 campaign for Excite and they think the world of the good-looking colt.

The pair have made no secret of their opinion of Excite, who was super impressive winning a stronger race at Te Rapa last start beating Incandescent.

But while they are still buzzing about Excite and the possibility of a J.J. Atkins start in Brisbane next month, James says Incandescent may close that gap tomorrow.

“Incandescent worked superbly on Tuesday morning,” James told the Herald.

“We think a lot of Excite as everybody knows and he would still be our top pick in the race, but I think Incandescent will get closer and I wouldn’t be totally stunned if he beat Excite.

“He has constantly improved all season and we have worked out how to ride him, being a bit quieter early on him.

“But he has definitely improved and we are very happy with them both going into Saturday.”

The Champagne Stakes is our only real 1600m test for 2-year-olds and with James being the Derby king, you can imagine his late-season juveniles lapping up 1600m at Ellerslie, especially in a small field so they can wind up from the 400m.

The stable has a strong hand in a number of races tomorrow, with December (Race 4, No 2) and Zivou (R5, No 1) obvious chances in their sprint assignments.

“December just pulled too hard over 1600m last start so we have freshened him up and dropped him back in distance and he is ready to go,” James said.

“And we have two good chances in the race after that. Zivou will be tough to beat but he is probably no better chance than our other runner Arwen.”

That 3-year-old 1100m dash contains plenty of speedsters though, with Ruby Rush impressive last start and claiming 3kg tomorrow, while Bulgari, King’s English and Lady Irish have been racing in stronger fields, with Bulgari probably the best-performed over all.

Grinzinger Moon made quite an impression winning her New Zealand debut at Ellerslie last week after moving here from Australia and James says that race seems to have brought her on, so she can win again in the Hallmark Stud 1100.

“A race we were really looking forward to is the Rating 65 over 1300m where we have three in but two of them, Cosmic Dream [11] and Hasstorock [18], have drawn wide, so Hasstorock probably won’t start.

“We really like Cosmic Dream and she will be hard to beat with any luck from her draw, while To The Max has to be a chance as he is drawn the best of the three.”

While the stable should have a profitable day at Ellerslie, it is more subdued about Solid Gold’s Australian debut in the Rough Habit Plate in Brisbane tomorrow.

The last-start Trelawney Stud Championship winner has drawn barrier 17, which is less than ideal around Doomben.

“She is going to have to be ridden conservatively early and take whatever luck comes our way but from that draw, this becomes more of a lead-up race to the Oaks than a race we now expect to win,” James said.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.