Empire Rose Stakes aim for Loving Gaby

Monday 23 September 2019, 4:40pm

Loving Gaby has yet to step out at the races this spring but her connections have their sights on a feature race later in the carnival for the dual Group One-placed filly.

With races such as the Group One Thousand Guineas (1600m) on October 12 coming up too soon for Loving Gaby, the stable is aiming her at the Group One Empire Rose Stakes (1600m) on November 2 at Flemington.

The Empire Rose is run at weight-for-age for fillies and mares and three-year-olds have won two of the past three years, with I Am A Star successful in 2016 before Shoals' victory the following year.

"We thought that would be her race," co-trainer David Eustace said.

"She has run a mile. Three-year-old fillies in that race have obviously got a good record so we just identified that as a Group One race she can win, having missed the Guineas."

Loving Gaby contested four of the five Group One races for two-year-olds in Australia last season, finishing sixth in the Blue Diamond before her fourth in the Golden Slipper and seconds in both the ATC Sires' Produce Stakes and Champagne Stakes.

After that autumn campaign, which included a Group Three win in the Chairman's Stakes on debut in February, Eustace said the filly had taken time to come to hand this preparation.

Loving Gaby was taken to The Valley to gallop on Monday morning and is nominated for Saturday's Group Three Scarborough Stakes (1200m) at the same track.

While that is an option connections are likely to wait a bit longer before launching her campaign.

"She looked to work really nicely but we still feel she's a couple of weeks off really peaking," Eustace said.

Eustace said stakes-placed Charleise, winner of a maiden at Geelong at her first start of this campaign on September 15, was set to run in the Scarborough after also working at The Valley on Monday.

"She worked very nicely," Eustace 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 »