Premier's Cup to be serious test: Waller

Thursday 29 August 2013, 3:41pm

Chris Waller is more concerned about the depth of opposition rather than a plain draw for import Lunayir in the $100,000 Premier's Cup at Rosehill on Saturday.

Lunayir will start from second widest alley in a race that would have been even stronger if Waller had accepted with original topweight Bayrir.

As it stands, the Listed race has attracted an Australian Derby runner-up in Polish Knight and an English St Leger placegetter in Michelangelo.

Both horses are betting outsiders and the solid nature of the field is further underlined by Prince Cheri's status as a second emergency, given trainer David Vandyke's spring schedule for the five-year-old.

Waller won the Premier's Cup with Snow Alert in 2010 and he has provided most of the placegetters since 2009 but expects this year's winner to return a superior rating to recent editions.

"It looks a really strong staying race," Waller said.

"Lunayir has got an awkward gate but we ride him quiet anyway so it doesn't matter so much to him."

A member of the OTI Racing team, Lunayir is in his second Australian campaign after coming from France where he ran in last year's French Derby.

He won second-up for Waller during the autumn carnival and goes into the Premier's Cup after resuming with a minor placing to Honorious over 1400m.

"He ran a really good race first-up and the step up to 1800 metres will be no problem at all," Waller said.

Honorious ($3.40) is a clear-cut favourite to make it back-to-back wins despite an injury scare after his Rosehill victory.

– 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 »