Gai out to end Darley's Sydney 2YO spree

Thursday 5 December 2013, 2:22pm

Gai Waterhouse will give herself two chances to end Darley's winning streak in Sydney two-year-old races at Randwick on Saturday.

And with her usual brand of brash confidence, she is confident she can pull it off.

"The horses are just starting to take shape and I've got lots of colts in the stable who have taken a bit longer to get ready," Waterhouse said.

Cyclone and Our Catch, both colts, will represent Tulloch Lodge in the Ascend Sales Trophies Plate (1000m) on the Kensington track.

Their nine rivals include the Darley duo of debutant Dialect and Occitan, who provided one leg of Peter Snowden's quartet of consecutive two-year-old Saturday winners.

Snowden's domination of juvenile racing started with the impressive Earthquake on November 9 before Memorial (two wins) and Occitan followed suit.

Waterhouse's sole two-year-old winner this season has been Law who took out the Breeders' Plate in October.

But the Melbourne Cup-winning trainer is starting to assemble her team for the Magic Millions in January and Cyclone and Our Catch are among the early contenders for $2 million Classic honours.

"They are both Magic Millions horses and very talented," Waterhouse said.

"That is where they are heading."

Cyclone, a $260,000 yearling, is by Waterhouse's 2008 Golden Slipper winner Sebring and is raced in similar interests.

His dam, Bella Corona, was also a smart juvenile placing twice at Group level as well as as taking out the 2003 Listed Keith Mackay Quality.

Cyclone comes into Saturday's race as the winner of a barrier trial in which Our Catch finished second.

He is $11 in early markets which are topped by Occitan at $3.60.

Occitan is one of only three runners with race experience along with Tantrum Testa for Chris Waller and the Bjorn Baker-trained Unencumbered.

Unencumbered, who like the Waterhouse pair is a Magic Millions graduate, scored a strong win on debut at Randwick and fought on well for third at his only other start.

He has not raced for more than a month but tuned up for Saturday with a narrow barrier trial win on November 26.

– 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 »