Horse racing: Molly looks a Bloom-ing good shot

Molly Bloom.

Molly Bloom isn’t the horse co-trainer Lance O’Sullivan hoped she would be when she came into his stable. She is better.

The talented filly could start favourite in the $175,000 Soliloquy Stakes at Pukekohe tomorrow, the crucial lead-up race to the $500,000 NZ 1000 Guineas at Riccarton on November 18.

The 1400m Group 2 contains many of the north’s best fillies and those who excel tomorrow almost certainly get rewarded with a plane ticket to Christchurch, those who finish midfield or worse likely to be staying home and waiting for summer’s black type races.

Molly Bloom is expected to be on that plane for Cup week but that wasn’t originally what O’Sullivan and training partner Andrew Scott thought they were getting when she walked into their stable.

“She is bred to get an Oaks trip, being by a Derby winner in Ace High out of staying family but she is far more advanced than that,” says O’Sullivan. “She is very athletic and while she has got back in some of her races that is because we wanted to teach her to settle and get her breathing right with races like the Oaks the original long-term aim.

“But she doesn’t have to do that and I think she can stay handy enough from barrier 1 on Saturday to be a winning chance.

“She is a good filly but she is going to have to be because most of the best fillies are here.”

O’Sullivan isn’t wrong about that, with the Soliloquy now one of our elite fillies races, with Legarto beating Romancing The Moon and Prowess in last year’s running, all three now Group 1 winners.

Tomorrow’s race has great depth and includes plenty of fillies who, like Molly Bloom, could be expected to excel over even longer distances.

The one filly who ticks the most boxes is Luberon. She is in-form, can run handy to the speed and is expected to be even more comfortable right-handed than when winning her last two starts left-handed.

With regular rider Warren Kennedy suspended, Luberon will be partnered by star Victorian apprentice Celine Gaudray, who has nearly a full book on her first day riding in New Zealand.

Gaudray was initially contacted by Luberon’s connections but as one of the rising stars of Victorian racing she has quickly proved popular with local trainers and she says she will be keen to come back to New Zealand for good rides should tomorrow go well.

As talented as Luberon and Molly Bloom are, though, there are plenty of fillies in the Soliloquy who could be running home hard if the tempo is genuine so the race not only provides an interesting punting puzzle but a crucial form guide to what lies ahead.