The field for the 2019 Group 2 $500,000 Bowermans Office Furniture Shorts (1100m) at Randwick today has been decimated with more than half the field being scratched.
Osborne Bulls, above, is one of six scratchings from The Shorts at Randwick. Photo by Ultimate Racing Photos.
A final field of five will line up in the 1100m Group 2 sprint following the withdrawal of Santa Ana Lane, Osborne Bulls, Viridine, In Her Time, Sunlight and Jonker after the Randwick track was rated a soft 7 this morning.
The reassessed market at Ladbrokes.com.au for the remaining five The Short runners has Pierata as the $2.40 favourite just ahead of Redzel at $3.40, Classique Legend at $3.50, Graff at $9.50 and Home Of The Brave the outsider of the five horse field at $12.
The Anthony Freedman trained Santa Ana Lane, Tony and Calvin McEvoy’s Sunlight and the James Cummings’ pair off Osborne Bulls and Viridine were scratched on Friday when the track rating was in the heavy range while In Her Time and Jonker were withdrawn this morning.
Cummings said that even though the track rating had been ungraded since last night, he was still comfortable with his decision to scratch Osborne Bulls and Viridine from The Shorts and added that he still had plenty of options left to see if that were up to filling the Goldolphin slot for the $14m The Everest (1200m) at Randwick on October 19.
“I think that there are still going to be jockeys coming back into connections today telling them that they didn’t handle the track and forgive their performance,” Cummings told Sky Racing’s HQ Saturday.
“And that was not a position we wanted to be in with the horses that we did scratch.”
“We have got better options.”
“When it comes to Viridine and Flit we have better options. When it comes to Osborne Bulls, he hasn’t trialled for nearly seven weeks and whilst I think he trialled beautifully and galloped beautifully a couple of weeks ago.”
“Nevertheless it is not an ideal preparation when you are coming up against Redzel and Pierata who had the run in the Concorde and they are just flying going into it.”
The Peter and Paul Snowden trained Redzel is the winner of the last two running of The Everest and will run in this year’s race in the Yu Long Investments’ slot while Pierata will run in the slot owned by Aquis.
Redzel and Pierata will clash for the second time this Spring Carnival after they finished first and second in the Group 3 $160,000 Forum Concorde Stakes (1200m) at Randwick a fortnight ago.
Redzel and Pierata will be suited by the rain affected track today with both having winning wet track form.
The lightly raced Les Bridge trained Classique Legend also has two wins from two attempts on a soft rated track and has won a recent 1000m Randwick barrier trial in preparation for his first Spring Carnival outing.
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