O'Hara to link with Princess at Hawkesbury

Tuesday 29 April 2014, 4:26pm

Kathy O'Hara has been given a late autumn carnival opportunity with confirmation she will ride Estonian Princess in the Hawkesbury Guineas.

Estonian Princess will back up after winning the JHB Carr Stakes at Randwick on Saturday when Brenton Avdulla had the mount.

But with Avdulla riding the Anthony Cummings-trained Spy Decoder, Scott Aspery is hoping O'Hara's experience on Estonian Princess can help end the filly's autumn on a winning note.

"Kathy's won on the horse before and she knows her as well as anyone," Aspery said.

In a racing campaign that started in December, Estonian Princess has raced 10 times for three wins and two important placings in lucrative Magic Millions races, including the $1 million Guineas at the Gold Coast.

"She had two weeks off after the Gold Coast in January but aside from that she's been going for five months now," Aspery said.

Aspery said the spelling paddock would win out over a Queensland Guineas campaign.

"I think she has done enough," he said. "She deserves a break because she has proven she is worthy of a tilt at some of the better races in the spring."

Aspery has staying colt Star Wars also entered for the Guineas but the trainer said if he was to run on Saturday it would be against older horses in the Hawkesbury Gold Cup.

A failure on a heavy track in the Tulloch Stakes, Star Wars is being aimed at next month's Queensland Derby.

"He needs to have a run between now and Queensland and a mile race either at Hawkesbury or at Wyong on Thursday will be perfect," Aspery said.

Cup weights are headed by the Tony McEvoy-trained Mouro who has 59kg after winning the Rowley Mile at last year's corresponding meeting with 54kg.

Malavio, an Avdulla mount with 56kg, is the only other horse among the 16 entries to be weighted above the 54kg minimum.

– 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 »