It's take two for Bandersnatch at Randwick

Tuesday 28 April 2020, 2:56pm

A small cut put paid to Bandersnatch's Hawkesbury Guineas bid but trainer Gerald Ryan says it looked a lot worse than it was.

Well supported into favouritism leading up to Saturday's Group Three race at Rosehill, Bandersnatch was scratched at the barrier when he was found to have a wound on a hind leg.

His trainer has no idea how it happened given the distancing rules surrounding racing during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Where I was standing looking towards the mounting yard I couldn't see if he did it there," Ryan said.

"It was really minor, like a paper cut, but there was an awful lot of blood.

"He can sometimes get worked up. He is a bit of an airhead.

"He worked on Sunday and Monday and galloped this morning so he is ready to go on Saturday."

He may be an airhead, but Bandersnatch has won four of his eight starts and races in the same colours as Inz'n'out, part-owned by jockeys' valet Chris Barrett.

The gelding is one of 21 entries for the Benchmark 88 race over 1400m on the Kensington track at Randwick.

All going well, he will then be given the chance at another rich race, the $200,000 Scone Guineas two weeks later.

Like the Hawkesbury meeting, the Scone program will be run at Rosehill to accommodate metropolitan jockeys with riders divided into three zones because of COVID-19.

Ryan entered Cardiff in two races but he will run over 1100 metres with stablemate Mana Musa to run over 1000.

Normally at this time of year, Ryan would be looking at horses to transition from the Scone meeting to races in Brisbane.

But unless travel restrictions are eased he is unlikely to send anything to Queensland for the reduced winter carnival.

"You can send the horses but you can't send your own staff which makes it difficult," he said.

"At the moment we probably won't send horses up there and we are still racing for good money here.

"We will make a final decision after the Scone meeting."

– 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 »