Lyre chasing Blue Diamond-Slipper double

Wednesday 20 March 2019, 3:00pm

An impressive barrier trial on soft ground and an encouraging piece of work at Randwick has Lyre poised for her shot at joining a select group of two-year-olds to win the Blue Diamond and Golden Slipper double.

The Anthony Freedman-trained Lyre took her record to three wins from four starts when she came from back in the field to win the $1.5 million Group One Blue Diamond (1200m) at Caulfield last month.

After giving the Godolphin-owned filly some time to freshen up after that victory on February 23, the decision was made to give the filly her chance in Saturday's $3.5 million Group One Golden Slipper (1200m) at Rosehill.

Lyre is striving to become the sixth juvenile to complete the Blue Diamond-Golden Slipper double and first since Sepoy in 2011.

Courtza is the most recent filly to achieve the feat 30 years ago.

Rosehill was rated in the heavy range on Wednesday and Freedman's son and assistant Sam Freedman has a feeling the filly will handle rain-affected ground, although he admitted if it was a bottomless track it would be an unknown.

Lyre won a barrier trial last week at Randwick on a soft track and Freedman said she also worked stylishly on Tuesday.

"Luke Currie was raving about her and said she seemed to love the ground in the trial," Sam Freedman said.

"And again on Tuesday morning she galloped on the course proper at Randwick, worked with a mate and went past like it was standing still."

While the Blue Diamond had been Lyre's main target, Freedman said the filly had continued to thrive for her Golden Slipper tilt and they couldn't be happier with her condition.

In an open Slipper, Lyre was on the fifth line of betting at $11 on Wednesday.

"It hasn't been done for a while, the Blue Diamond-Slipper double, especially without a run in between," Freedman said.

"So from that perspective history is against her but she doesn't know that.

"She's possibly underestimated a little bit. She can't have done any more to grasp the attention of punters and anyone else, but in our eyes she's just going as well as she ever has, so she should not be underestimated."

Lyre is one of five two-year-olds in the Slipper who raced in the Blue Diamond along with Lankan Star, Free Of Debt, Loving Gaby and Catch Me.

Lyre is one of six Godolphin-owned chances set to run in the 16-horse field along with Microphone, Tenley, Pin Sec, Kiamichi and Exhilarates who are all trained by James Cummings.

Cummings also has first emergency Bivouac.

– 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 »