Streets back to happy hunting ground

Thursday 18 February 2021, 4:50pm

Shane Nichols is often bemused when he looks at the price of his stable star Streets Of Avalon and bookmakers again have him shaking his head over their Futurity Stakes assessments.

"Tell me in what other year would you find the winner of the Australia Stakes and the Orr Stakes at $12 in the Futurity Stakes? It seems over the odds to me as I think he's a great each-way chance," Nichols said.

Behemoth is a $3.20 favourite with TAB fixed odds, ahead of Probabeel who is a $3.50 chance to win the Group One 1400 metre event at Caulfield on Saturday.

Streets Of Avalon is also the reigning Futurity Stakes winner.

"He's in great form. He loves the Caulfield 1400 metres and he hasn't gone backwards since his Orr Stakes win," Nichols said.

The Orr Stakes produced a typical Streets Of Avalon victory with the horse showing his usual pace and fighting traits to hold off a strong challenge from Imaging.

"I was as confident as I've ever been going into the Orr Stakes and he's in the same shape to replicate that success. He's capable of doing it. He hasn't gone backwards," Nichols said.

Nichols said Zac Spain would employ his usual roll-forward tactics aboard Streets Of Avalon.

"If we're in it, it's not going to be a sit-and-sprint race," Nichols said.

"He'll go forward and settle either in the lead or close to it and there will be a fast speed, without going silly, in the early stages."

Last year Streets Of Avalon dominated the Futurity Stakes from the outset and recorded a time of 1:21.09 minutes for the 1400 metres.

Nichols said although Streets Of Avalon was not nominated for the All-Star Mile he would run in it if he was successful on Saturday as the Futurity winner gets a golden ticket into the race.

"The way that race is setting up it's going to be a lot of horses who like to sit and sprint and we would have an advantage going forward," Nichols said.

"The one track I'd like to run him over 1600 metres at is Moonee Valley and there's not too many $5 million races on the calendar."

– 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 »