Racing: Stable top hope in feature

Lizzie L'Amour is the $1.60 favourite for the weight-for-age centrepiece of the day at Ellerslie. Photo / Trish Dunell

The situations could hardly be more different for the partners in New Zealand's champion stable this afternoon.

Murray Baker will be at Flemington saddling Zacada for the A$7.3 million Melbourne Cup, a race for which he is one of the rank outsiders and only rain forecast for today would seem to bring him into reckoning for a top 10 finish.

But training partner Andrew Forsman will oversee a powerful team at Ellerslie, which kicks off its first major meeting of the summer with plenty of glitz and glamour but hardly the hype of Flemington.

The other major difference though is that while the all-powerful Baker/Forsman stable may be rated little chance of winning the Melbourne Cup, the bookies see them as nearly good things in the $70,000 OMF Stakes, the feature race at Ellerslie.

Not only do they have proven group one winner Lizzie L'Amour as the $1.60 favourite for the weight-for-age centrepiece to the day but a very useful second string in Saint Emilion, the $6 equal third favourite.

It took subsequent Cox Plate runner Savvy Coup to deny Lizzie L'Amour the Livamol Classic at Hastings last start and Forsman says she has worked well since.

"We have two good chances in the race but it looks a particularly good race for Lizzie," said Forsman.

Saint Emilion can be hard to catch in 2000m weight-for-age races around Ellerslie though, many of which can be run at muddling tempos.

With another noted freegoer in Authentic Paddy in the race the key may well be whether the pair take each other on in the early to mid stages or stack their rivals up.

But with only seven starters it is hard to see Lizzie L'Amour not being within striking range of them at the 600m and therefore still the one to beat.

Lightly raced four-year-old mare Hello It's Me will attempt to add a second stakes victory at Ellerslie to her record in the same race.

The Chris Gibbs and Michelle Bradley-trained mare won the group two Royal Stakes (2000m) on the same track on New Year's Day and her connections believe she has taken a lot of improvement from her last-start unplaced run in the Livamol last month.

"I thought it was a really good run," Gibbs said. "She was always going to be disadvantaged with the speed of the track and at weight-for-age.

"I think if we had gotten some rain it would have brought us right into it, but it didn't happen. They were just going a bit too slick for her."

Gibbs said there are some handy horses in the field in today's contest, but is confident his four-year-old can test her much older competition.

"There are a couple of good horses in there, they all deserve their chance, but it's certainly a race that is winnable for anything in it.

"Our mare is in good order, I am happy with her going into the race."

Gibbs believes Hello It's Me is a big chance in the Ellerslie feature and has earmarked her for further black-type targets this spring.

"We might be coming into the wrong time of the year with her, but we'll quietly pick our way along until we decide to pop her back into the paddock again around Christmas," Gibbs said. "I think the nicest race for her would be the Counties Cup, being a handicap race. But she's in this race with a big chance."

- additional reporting: NZ Racing Desk.