With the final Group One of the season run and won, we look at Bella Nipotina’s Tiara win, and the horses to follow into the Spring.
We at Racing And Sports have long sang the praises of trainers and connections opting to race their horses through the Queensland Winter rather than spell in a cold, wet paddock. Racing makes racehorses and so many horses thrive later in their career because of it.
There is no better example of that theory than Bella Nipotina, the star of the Queensland Winter carnival, winning her third Group One race at her 52nd career start- with her second feature coming just four starts ago in her 49th start.
She started her preparation in the Lightning Stakes in February, running in just about every Group 1 sprint over the Autumn, then a quick trip to Perth for The Quokka before racing in the Doomben 10,000, Kingsford Smith, Stradbroke and Tatts Tiara.
Four runs in Queensland resulted in two Group One wins and two narrow second placings and while she’s slightly regressed her rating from a pair of 121’s in the two starts prior, her 117 rating is still at the high end of Tatts Tiara winners.
Only Srikandi (119), Red Tracer (119) and Tofane (118) have rated higher to win the Tiara since it became a Group One in 2011, Bella also matching Yosei with 117 in that inaugural edition.
With the sprinting ranks unusually thin in Australia, Bella, along with I Wish I Win, who has (finally) raced enough to find some form, can lay claim to being the best two sprinters in the country, and obvious Everest contenders.
They’re the obvious two with lofty Spring aspirations, but who else from the Queensland carnival has put their name in contention for some of the better races in the Spring?
Two-Year-Olds
No doubt Broadsiding is the pick in this category, with plenty spoken of him already. He’s the clear #1 seed in the Caulfield Guineas and the best Cox Plate chance of his age group, holding a peak of 116 backed up by strength and stamina through the line.
That said, a couple of other juveniles also suggested they can measure up in some of the better Spring races.
Arabian Summer went under the radar a bit in the Magic Millions National 2yo Classic, first-up off a fourt month spell since finishing fifth in the proper Magic Millions race behind Storm Boy in January.
She ran to a new peak of 106 there over the 1050m and I would assume is on a Coolmore Stud Stakes path in the Spring.
A strong 1200m might remain a query for her but she looks a prime Quezette Stakes horse first-up in early August around Caulfield. Pencil it in.
The other two-year-old on the up is Clean Energy, the sister to Sunlight who has (so far) justified the $2.6 million purchase price with two wins from two starts.
She ran 92 on debut at Warwick Farm and improved to 102 in the Listed Bill Carter Stakes (1200m) at Doomben, running a very strong time figure in the process.
Plenty of speed on early and Clean Energy sat 2nd in run, doing plenty to hold off the second filly who had a nice trail behind her all the way, with a huge gap back to third.
Her 102 rating is five pounds better than September Run rated in 2020, who of course went on to win the Coolmore, which gives you some indication of the level of improvement horses can make from Queensland into the Spring.
That all reads very well and she will almost certainly be better than her 102 rating denotes. It’ll be interesting to see if they go to a Golden Rose and then likely back to a Coolmore or focus entirely on the sprinting ranks, but either way, she should measure up well.
The time could well be right for more three-year-olds to tackle the older horses as the sprint level, especially in some of the ‘weaker’ Group Ones. With horses like I Wish I Win and Bella Nipotina likely to be focused solely on The Everest, races like the Manikato Stakes could come up very thin.
Don’t be surprised if a horse like Clean Energy, or one of the dozen talented Waterhouse & Bott stablemates went down that path en route to a Coolmore.
