Weir aiming at Adelaide Group Ones

Sunday 26 January 2014, 5:37pm

Darren Weir holds a 10-win lead in the Melbourne trainers' premiership but his major chances of Group One success this season will be in Adelaide.

Weir is aiming two of his stable stars, dual Group One-winner Platelet and classy filly May's Dream at the South Australian carnival.

Platelet will chase the same Group One sprint double she claimed last year - the Robert Sangster Stakes and The Goodwood - while three-year-old May's Dream is heading towards the Australasian Oaks (2000m).

Winner of two of her seven starts, May's Dream was runner-up to superstar filly Guelph in the Group One Thousand Guineas in the spring and second to Kirramosa in the Wakeful Stakes (2000m) before failing in the VRC Oaks (2500m) when eighth.

May's Dream's dam She's Archie was second in the Australasian Oaks in 2002 before winning the South Australian Oaks (2500m), giving Weir his first Group One win.

The SA Oaks has since been downgraded and renamed the South Australian Fillies Classic.

Weir has been delighted with the development May's Dream has made since the spring.

"She had a really good spell and has really developed," Weir said.

"She looks great, but she needed to develop."

Weir's concern through the spring was that May's Dream was only a light filly and he wasn't sure she would stand up to an Oaks campaign.

"After she won the Elvstroem Classic at Swan Hill in June she never went to the paddock, she went to the beach," Weir said.

"That got her to the Guineas and Wakeful, but in the Wakeful she showed signs of having had enough."

The Australasian Oaks (2000m) is at Morphettville on April 26, the same day as the Robert Sangster Stakes (1200m).

Platelet had four runs in the spring, the highlight her win in the Group Two Gilgai Stakes.

Her campaign ended when she finished second last as favourite in the Kevin Heffernan Stakes.

Platelet was supposed to run in the Group One VRC Sprint Classic at Flemington a week before the Heffernan but was scratched on race morning.

A clerical error listed her as being trained at Weir's Ballarat stable when in fact she was at his Warrnambool complex.

This led to her withdrawal because she could not be subjected to the same security as the other runners.

Weir said Platelet was back in work and doing well.

"She looks terrific," he said, adding she was likely to go into the Robert Sangster Stakes second-up.

– AAP

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