Prelude or Stutt Stakes next for Symphony

Sunday 17 September 2017, 4:35pm

Trainer Tony McEvoy is weighing up the best option for Royal Symphony's final lead-up to his main spring target and is leaning towards the Caulfield Guineas Prelude.

Royal Symphony remained unbeaten when he overcame difficulties to storm home late and win the Listed Pin & Win Plate (1400m) at Flemington on Saturday at his first start of the season.

The Stutt Stakes (1600m) had been the race McEvoy had initially been looking at for Royal Symphony's Caulfield Guineas lead-up, but after monitoring the colt's recovery from Saturday, the trainer thought another run at 1400m might be a better option.

The Stutt Stakes is at Moonee Valley under lights on September 29 while the Guineas Prelude (1400m) is at Caulfield two days later and is 13 days before the Group One Caulfield Guineas (1600m).

McEvoy is convinced there is more improvement to come from the colt who made it four wins from as many starts when he came from what his trainer thought was a near impossible position at the 400m mark on Saturday to get home in the final strides.

"He had a really big blow yesterday," McEvoy told RSN927.

"He blew up in the body. And whilst we got the job done there yesterday, I thought he was closer to the mark than the way he recovered for me. So I think there's lots (of improvement) to come.

"There's two options. He certainly needs another race.

"The two races are the Stutt at the Valley or the Guineas Prelude.

"The way his condition was yesterday, I'm leaning to running him again at 1400 metres.

"I just don't think straight to a mile will help the Caulfield Guineas run, whereas another 1400 will really bring him up to where he needs to be for the final."

Royal Symphony is the $3 favourite for the Caulfield Guineas ahead of Merchant Navy at $6.

– 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 »