Dragon Leap. Photo / Supplied
The $150,000 Foxbridge Plate may be seen as the race top horses use to kick off their season, but that isn’t the best way to win it.
The Group 2 sprint at Te Rapa tomorrow heralds an early start to spring racing with a fair smattering of our best gallopers, including Group 1 and Guineas winners as well as emerging talents such as Skew Wiff, who pushed Legarto close last season.
Horses like Pier, Mustang Valley, Belclare and Brando head to Te Rapa tomorrow with longer spring assignments as their main aims, but after their exploits last season they will have plenty of support.
So too will Darci La Bella, who comes in without a race this year but has been set for this by trainer Allan Sharrock, who has pulled off similar training coups before.
But while the Foxbridge may be seen as the border between winter’s often droll racing and the excitement of spring, the reality is horses who have used it as a bridge between the two seasons have been the most successful.
In the last decade six of the 10 winners have been horses who have raced over the winter and the horses to buck that trend had to be very good, if not champions.
Melody Belle won the Foxbridge fresh-up but only by a nose while her stablemate Avantage also won it fresh and went on to dominate the Group 1 sprints that season, winning the Railway, Telegraph and BCD Sprint.
Saracino won it fresh-up as a three-year-old but he was good enough to win the Group 2 Danehill Stakes at Flemington a few weeks later, while the most recent fresh-up winner Mascarpone won a Group 1 later that season and ran third to Levante and Roch ‘N’ Horse in one of the hottest Telegraphs in decades.
But simply, you need to be in for a serious season to win the Foxbridge Plate fresh so Brando, Mali Ston, El Vencedor, Pier, Darci La Bella, Mustang Valley, Belclare and Skew Wiff all have some big horseshoes to fill tomorrow.
Any of them could win, but if you take a stand with recent history and against the fresh runners then you are left with six fitter horses, but most of whom who aren’t as good as those on the first list.
Johny Johny is fit, fast and fun and should be the leader, while Gospodin has had some bright moments, as has Jodelin Girl. Top Brass looks outclassed.
Wewillrock brings recent winning Sydney form to the race but trainer Guy Lowry is realistic about where he fits in.
“He deserves his crack but there are better horses here than him,” says Lowry. “If we could finish in the money I’d be rapt.”
For those keeping score we now have eight class horses without recent racing and five fit horses who have never won a Group race.
That leaves one crossover horse who sits in the sweet spot.
Dragon Leap has always been a top horse, up with the best Group 1 gallopers in the country, and not only has the base fitness from a Queensland winter campaign but a stunning last-start victory at Ruakākā just three weeks ago. His troublesome feet seem good, he is drawn to sit and swoop which he loves, and he is the only proven weight-for-age sprinter in the race.
With Warren Kennedy aboard and as the horse who ran fourth in the Memsie at Caulfield on this weekend last year, Dragon Leap is the horse to beat tomorrow if the track gets back to anything resembling decent footing.