3 minute read
It's Bletchingly Stakes Day at Caulfield and a couple of big guns are back on the track. Spring isn't far away!
The biggest star stepping out on Saturday is Vega Magic who will be out to advertise himself as an Everest contender but it's a strong looking Bletchingly and betting edges are probably hard to come by.
The Melbourne Mail has been ticking along fairly over the winter and now treads the fine line between confidence and arrogance throwing up Bondeiger as the best of the day.
It's clutching a bit to point out that the seven-day back-up produced the best performance of Bondeiger's career, with his Derby placing now three years old, but the back-up can certainly be viewed in a positive light this Saturday with his run over 2000m last week shaping as the perfect springboard to 2400m now.
Better yet he stumbles into a race that would probably look more at home on a Wednesday than a Saturday. His reputation as a non-winner has to be shelved after he strung a trio of wins together last prep. And it's significant that they all came when he was stepped up beyond 2000m.
The sixth is one of two 2400m races on the card. Race five is a 2400m race for three-year-olds where Mount Kilcoy heads the betting.
That's fair enough, he won a high-rating race last time and is a horse of some promise, but his ratings spiral looks more likely to plateau than rise again, particularly next to a horse like Ocean's Fourteen.
Ocean's Fourteen is also coming off a last start win. A win that sits a fair way back from Mount Kilcoy's win in ratings terms but it does leave him poised to kick right on. He's third up and showed that he stays well back in the spring in Geelong's Derby Trial and appeals as a good each way option against the favourite who is tipped to be clinging on rather than kicking on this weekend.