Catkins to defend Breeders Classic title

Sunday 1 February 2015, 3:47pm

Group One placegetters Catkins and Delectation head Chris Waller's team for Rosehill as momentum builds towards the autumn carnival.

A defence of the Group Two Breeders' Classic (1200m) is Saturday's target for Catkins who will be joined by stablemate Arinosa in the mares' 1200m sprint.

Delectation begins his campaign in the Group Three Eskimo Prince Stakes (1200m) and Waller has high hopes for the gelding, a surprise second to stablemate Brazen Beau in the Coolmore Stud Stakes at Flemington in November.

Waller said the set weights and penalties of the Breeders' Classic suited Catkins who has been placed twice in the Myer Classic and ran third in the Coolmore Classic last autumn.

"The conditions of the race are ideal for her," Waller said.

"She is probably a bit more forward than Arinosa and is a class mare."

Catkins carried 55.5kg to win the race a year ago and will go up to 57kg this time around.

Arinosa missed the spring and will be striving for her first win since the Group Three Premiere Stakes in October 2013.

Delectation won three races as a two-year-old and his four spring starts brought two fourths and two place cheques including his Coolmore Stud second at $51.

He holds entries to both the Australian Guineas (1600m) and the Newmarket Handicap (1200m) and Waller is still deciding whether he will be kept to sprints this time around.

"The whole of his last preparation was spent trying to get him to switch off," he said.

"He is now starting to come of age mentally and his Coolmore placing shows what is capable of doing.

"But whether he is a sprinter or can be stretched to a mile, I'm still not sure."

The other feature on the Rosehill program, the $250,000 Inglis Classic, is also over 1200 metres and is restricted to horses bought at the yearling sale which gives the race its name.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »