Soul on target for stakes success

Thursday 27 September 2012, 3:11pm

The Reginald Allen Quality proved a career launching pad for Regal Cheer and Joe Pride is hoping it might do the same for improving filly Brave Soul.

The Pride-trained Regal Cheer won the Listed feature in 2005 and the following autumn joined the ranks of Group One winners when she claimed the Coolmore Classic.

Brave Soul has a long way to go to reach such heights but has shown promise in her brief five-start career.

Fourth to Driefontein in the Widden Stakes as a youngster, she resumed with a breakthrough victory over 900m at Newcastle last month.

Saturday's 1200 metre race at Rosehill is a sharp rise in grade but it's a leap Pride believes Brave Soul is capable of making.

"I'm really happy with her. She's ready to produce a career-best, which she needs to do," Pride said.

"She looks great and her work has been outstanding.

"This race was Regal Cheer's first Listed win. I think this filly is very good.

"She might have been handled a bit too aggressively as a two-year-old and she struck a few wet tracks as well."

Blake Shinn has the ride on Brave Soul while Hugh Bowman will partner Pride's other stakes contender at Rosehill, Racing Heart in the Group Three Colin Stephen Quality (2400m).

Formerly with Robert Heathcote in Queensland, Racing Heart's only start for Pride was a seventh of nine runners in the Newcastle Cup (2300m).

The performance disappointed his new trainer and has prompted Pride to revert to the riding tactics which yielded consecutive wins for the gelding at his previous two starts in Brisbane.

"He was disappointing the other day. I'm told he's not meant to be ridden that way, he needs to be ridden more aggressively," Pride said.

"He took the trail in a slow run race which would suit most horses but apparently it doesn't suit him.

"We will be trying something different on Saturday.

"I'd say the race will be genuinely run."

Progressive four-year-old Upshot rounds out Pride's Rosehill team and he isn't overly negative about his barrier draw - 16 of 16 - in the final race.

"Barriers can be funny things. If there is plenty of speed on it might pan out for him," he 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 »