MELBOURNE: One-time Golden Slipper hopeful Tranquility Base makes her comeback in the Toltrice Handicap at today's non-metropolitan winners meeting at Sandown.
The daughter of General Nediym, prepared by the Gary Portelli stable, showed plenty of promise last season as a 2-year-old, finishing third to subsequent group three winnerGamble Me over 1200m at Rosehill at her race debut last February. That encouraging effort was followed by a solid eighth, beaten 3 1/2 lengths, to Chinchilla Rose in the Sweet Embrace Stakes (1200m) at Randwick last March.
"I had her all along and I said to Gary I thought she could be a topliner," Portelli's assistant trainer and brother Troy said last night.
"So we sent her up to Sydney to try to get her qualified for the Slipper because she wasn't nominated. When she ran a bottler first-up we thought 'here we go it's all going to be sweet' but I think she just had too tough a run and it took it out of her.
"She was spelled and when she returned to work she had a bit of swelling and had to have a bone chip removed from a fetlock. So since then we have taken her along nice and slowly and we will be looking for a good run."
The other Portelli runner at the meeting is Red Ransom 3-year-old gelding White Phosphorus in the New Gleam Handicap (1400m), to be ridden by Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Michael Rodd.
Like many other stables, the brothers had a frustrating spring when, due to the restrictions imposed by the equine influenza crisis, they had only six horses in the satellite stable at Flemington.
"We were set to have our first Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup runner with Rena's Lady and a few of our 3-year-olds were being aimed at the Guineas," Troy Portelli said.
But things are looking up again with the Warwick Farm-based trainer landing a winning double at Randwick on Tuesday with Cigar Royale and Weekend In Paris.
