The Winter Cup meeting will be held at Rosehill Gardens this Saturday (4th Jun). The course proper was rated a Heavy 8 on Thursday and with mainly fine weather in Sydney leading up to the weekend, Rosehill will be racing on a Soft track on raceday.
Baroque Road came up with a good win on debut over 1100m on a Soft 7 track last month and he looks the horse they have to catch in the opening event at Rosehill (Sydney Race 1, 1300m). The 2YO gelding gave nothing else a chance when he led from start to finish in his only race start at Kensington. He will strip fitter when 2nd up on Saturday and he should handle the extra 200m. Brenton Avdulla will go straight to the lead and Baroque Road is going to run them ragged.
Military Mission is in prime condition to take out the Listed Winter Cup (Sydney Race 5, 2400m). This English import has been very consistent this preparation winning twice with a further two placings from four starts. Following back-to-back wins at Canterbury and Hawkesbury, the gelding finished a narrow 2nd last start lumping 61kg on his back at the Gosford stand-alone meeting. Military Mission is rock hard fit and stepping up in trip will really suit. And he will drop a massive 7kg (down to 54kg) on Saturday. Rachel King will go to the front to control the pace and Military Mission will be hard to catch.
French import Arapaho was also nominated for the Winter Cup but Bjorn Baker has decided to run the gelding in the Petaluma Handicap instead (Sydney Race 7, 1800m). The 5YO has three conditional runs earlier this campaign before he annihilated the field by almost 8 lengths last start over this course and trip two weeks ago. And all his four career victories came on Slow and Heavy tracks. Fifth-up on Saturday, Arapagho is ready to peak. From barrier 9, Joshua Parr will settle just behind the leaders and Arapaho will let down strongly in the last two furlongs.
By Owens Wong