Sydney’s premier trainer, Chris Waller, is planning a major assault on the rich Scone cup carnival next week and has nominated 14 horses including Snow Alert and Wazn in the Listed Emirates Park Scone cup (1600m) on Friday week.
His early entries also include Triple Elegance in Friday’s Yarraman Park Horsepower Open (1300m) and Flying Zero and Senta D’Amor in the $500,000 Inglis Three Year Old Guineas (1400m) at Saturday’s stand alone metropolitan meeting.
The open will be an interesting test for Triple Elegance which has been out of form since winning last year’s Liverpool City cup then running a close third to Rangirandoo in the Group One George Ryder.
Triple Elegance showed he might be on the way back to form when sixth in the Hall Mark Stakes late last month and Waller has his sights on the Doomben 10,000 and Stradbroke Hcp with the five year old.
While Snow Alert’s form has been patchy in four runs since resuming, Wazn resumed with a cracking fourth behind another cup hope in Star Of Octagonal in the Rowley Mile at Hawkesbury last Saturday.
Prior to that the lightly raced Wazn showed he was a stayer of the future with a succession of restricted class wins in Sydney leading up to a close second in the Gosford Cup.
Leading Victorian trainer John Sadler also has his sights on Scone and has nominated five horses for the Saturday meeting including Little Bro and Houston Benefactor in the Inglis Guineas.
Little Bro, by Al Maher, has started only four times for two provincial wins while Houston Benefactor, previously trained by Anthony Cummings, has started three times for Sadler for a last start win at Sale.
Sadler has also nominated Houston Benefactor for the Listed Coolmore Dark Jewel while Deer Valley, previously trained by John O’Shea, has been nominated by Sadler for the Prydes EasiFeed Quality.
Deer Valley has not raced since finishing unplaced in Listed company at Randwick last October.
Nominations for both days of the carnival close on Monday morning.
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One of the traditions leading up to the Emirates Park Scone cup carnival is the annual Hunter Valley stud tour which will be run next Tuesday with Scone Race Club chairman and breeding afficionado, Noel Leckie, as compere.
This tour will feature visits to four of the valley’s leading breeding nurseries starting with one of the newest, the Brown family owned Kitchwin Hills.
In a relatively short space of time Kitchwin Hills has quickly established itself a major industry player through the deeds of Dane Shadow and with the introduction to stud two years ago of one of Red Ransom’s most handsome sons, Duporth.
After a country style morning tea at Scone Polo Ground it will be on to Arrowfield, the home of some of Australia’s leading stallions including Redoute’s Choice, Flying Zero and the young stallions making a real mark in Snitzel and Not A Single Doubt.
There are also two exciting new additions to the stallion roster at Arrowfield in All American and Manhattan Rain.
The tour then heads back to Scone Race Course for lunch in the new function centre before taking in one of the Valley’s most historic studs in Vinery, which was first established in the 1820’s and known as Segenhoe.
Vinery stands 10 stallions including More Than Ready, Testa Rossa and Mossman.
The tour concludes at the magnificent Darley stud at Aberdeen, owned by Sheikl Mohammed and will feature parades by Octagonal and Lonhro’s Golden Rose winning son Denman, who entered stud in 2010.
Stud staff will explain the infrastructure and procedures which allows between 1500 and 2000 mares to be served between September and December each year.
Bookings and enquiries through Harvey World Travel’s Scone office.