Candika ready for Oaks trial

Friday 19 May 2017, 1:45pm

Candika will get every chance to prove she is a potential stayer in the Group Three Doomben Roses.

She meets a strong field of fillies in Saturday's Group Two Roses (2000m) but trainer Steve O'Dea is confident she has the form to be more than competitive.

O'Dea is keen to run Candika in the Group One Queensland Oaks (2400m) at Eagle Farm on June 3.

At her most recent start Candika indicated she would stay when third behind Roses favourite Dawn Wall in the Gold Coast Bracelet two weeks ago,

"She had a wide barrier and Damian Browne had to take her to the lead. It isn't the way to ride her but he had no choice," O'Dea said.

"The fact she fought on to be third was encouraging. This week she is drawn in the middle of the field which should be ideal as she can get cover."

"She hasn't wanted to over-race her past couple of starts which is also encouraging. But Saturday will tell and this is her final test."

O'Dea said if Candika showed she didn't stay he would freshen her up for the Group two Queensland Guineas (1600m) on June10.

Candika's stablemate Sir Moments, who is also raced by the Proven Thoroughbreds syndicate, runs in the Group Three BRC Sprint (1350m).

"He has done well since his last start failure. He does have a bad barrier but by race eight on a wet day it might not matter," O'Dea said.

– 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 »