Racing: Alabama Lass shakes competitors with blazing run

Alabama Lass and Sam Spratt winning at Ellerslie on Saturday. Photo / Kenton Wright

Alabama Lass left Ellerslie yesterday with a Group 2 victory, a trophy and a question mark hanging over her head.

The electrifying filly exploded out of the widest gate to lead the $175,000 Windsor Park Soliloquy Stakes after 50m and was under little pressure until the 200m when she started to wander toward the middle of the straight.

Maybe it was her early burn, but that looked effortless. Maybe it was the fact it was her first start right-handed or maybe Alabama Lass just got lonely or bored.

The bottom line is she still won by a length, punters got paid and she reminded us she is one wickedly fast and exciting filly.

But before she pulled up you knew what was coming next.

Co-trainer Ken Kelso not only has a remarkable record with female gallopers but also one of the sharpest brains in training and it would have been in overdrive trying to work out whether this was the win of a filly who will handle a Group 1 1600m next start.

The NZ 1000 Guineas at Riccarton on November 16 is the most testing 1600m any 3-year-old filly faces against her own sex in this country and Kelso went into yesterday hoping Alabama Lass’ brilliance coupled with the fact she settles in her races may help her handle the step up in distance.

After yesterday he will be thinking a Guineas tilt might be right at the end of her stamina range, maybe even beyond that horizon.

“I will have a think about it,” was Kelso’s immediate reply when asked the 1000 Guineas question.

“She has other options and I am not sure she will get the 1600m as well as she does a shorter distance.” Those other options could include a race like the Railway, the open aged 1200m at Ellerslie which would also tick that crucial Group 1 box for Alabama Lass and a race Kelso and wife Bev won with another 3-year-old filly Bounding in 2014.

Those who know Kelso would lean toward him letting Alabama Lass be a sprinter but jockey Sam Spratt further confused the 1000 Guineas picture when she suggested after the race that it was the right-handed track more than the 1400m distance which allowed her rivals to get so close.

“She got lost a bit, but if she hadn’t she would have trotted in,” says Spratt.

“I think it was because it was her first time right-handed, but back to left-handed I am sure she will get the 1600m.”

The TAB bookies will, like the punters, hang on Kelso’s call as they now have Alabama Lass as the $2.40 favourite for the Guineas, partly because our other elite filly Captured By Love is being touted as a 2000 Guineas contender against the boys a week earlier.

Their movements could even affect each other. If Alabama Lass pulls out of the 1000 Guineas then Captured By Love would be red hot should she head that way.

But if Captured By Love, who races in the Sarten Memorial at Te Rapa on Monday, declares to go to the 2000 Guineas then maybe Kelso will think Alabama Lass can get away with the 1600m against horses she might just simply be faster than.

However, it is doubtful Kelso will wait that long and it is a flip of the coin at best Alabama Lass will make it to Riccarton next month.

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.