There’s only one horse racing at Rosehill on Saturday that is unbeatable.
Jockey Tommy Berry (Pic: Steve Hart).
So jockey Tommy Berry, buoyed by the promising Australian debut of Kiwi three-year-old Madison County, gives himself a sneaky chance of upsetting The Autumn Sun in the Group 1 $600,000 Sky Racing Rosehill Guineas (2000m).
Madison County finished fourth behind The Autumn Sun in the Randwick Guineas but Berry saw enough there to say at 2000m it could be a different story.
“He’s not Winx, he could be one day but he’s not at the moment,’’ Berry said.
“I feel that I took good enough ground off him the other day to suggest over 2000m I’ll get pretty close.
“He puts himself in a tricky spot The Autumn Sun, where horses that are unbeatable like the mare can put themselves anywhere and she has an electrifying turn of foot as soon as you ask her.
“The Autumn Sun gets stoked up from the 600m and looks like he’s in trouble for a while before he gets to his best. I got off his back coming to the corner because I thought he wasn’t going well enough then he put four on me.’’
A look at Madison County’s Randwick Guineas run through his Punter’s Intelligence data shows the dual NZ Group 1 winner was the only horse to come close to The Autumn Sun’s splits.
As Berry suggested, he travelled better than the star colt coming to the turn running 11.38 to The Autumn Sun’s 11.42 but was then outsprinted from the 400m-200m where he ran 0.22 slower.
Madison County’s final 200m was 11.55 which was just 0.04 inferior to The Autumn Sun.
Neither horse has been to 2000m before and Berry is hoping the extra two furlongs will play into his mount’s hands.
“The other day over the mile he just sprinted too well for me on the bend and I thought he was going to put me away quite comfortably,’’ he said.
“But the last 150m or furlong my guy was eating away at his ground. He’s just a gutsy little horse and he’ll like the wet track.
“He feels like he’s come through the run well, he obviously had six weeks between runs leading into the other day so he has a lot of improvement.’’
The Autumn Sun stifles betting at $1.35 with TAB while Madison County is rated a $10 chance.
Golden Slipper day has been good to Berry in the past with two victories in richest two-year-old race in the world – Overreach in 2013 and Vancouver in 2015.
He’s on $16 chance Pin Sec in 2019 for Godolphin and while he hasn’t ridden the filly in a race he was rapt with how the Black Opal winner felt in trackwork on Tuesday on a wet track.
“I worked her on a quite heavy track but she didn’t skip a beat,’’ he said.
“It really impressed me the way she attacked the line in her work.’’
– Racing NSW
