Guineas salute still in Jude's sight

Wednesday 8 January 2014, 10:42am

Melbourne trainer Robert Smerdon has put Salute To Jude's first Queensland outing down to experience and is confident he can bounce back in the Magic Millions Guineas.

Salute To Jude earned his ticket to Saturday's $1 million race at the Gold Coast with a comprehensive win over 1200m at Flemington last month.

He had an unorthodox lead-up over 900 metres in the Bat Out Of Hell Quality at the Gold Coast last Saturday, finishing 10th of the 13 runners.

"He missed the start and everything that could go wrong did go wrong," Smerdon said.

"I'm not too worried about it."

What does concern the trainer is Salute To Jude's wide barrier in the 1400m feature. He drew 19 but will come into 15 if the emergencies fail to get a start.

"It's going to make it very hard for him," Smerdon said.

"He will be competitive if he can get the right run, but the barrier is the big deal."

Once the gates open, the problem will belong to Damien Oliver who is the form jockey of the moment.

"Damien is going to have to weave some magic when he comes out of the barrier," Smerdon said.

The barrier draw had no effect on Salute To Jude's price. The gelding remains at $10 with the TAB.

– 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 »