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Saturday’s Sydney feature can throw a feature-race winner.
Late July isn't historically regarded as a time you need to tune in to a Listed race in Sydney to get a gauge on who might end up winning two of the biggest races of the Melbourne spring.
But no race last year proved a better launching pad to the two big Cups than the $160,000 Winter Challenge, the 2023 edition of which will be run this Saturday at Rosehill.
Gold Trip, winner of the $8 million Melbourne Cup, started his campaign in the 1500-metre event, finishing third behind Cross Talk.
Four spots behind Gold Trip was Durston, the horse who nabbed Gold Trip late in the $5 million Group 1 Caulfield Cup.
The 2022 Winter Challenge proved one of the great springboards, but it was not the first time the race that was not inaugurated until 2011 has proven a key spring pointer.
The race's first winner was Foreteller, who didn't scale any great heights in the spring of 2011 but did win a Ranvet Stakes, Makybe Diva Stakes and Underwood Stakes at the highest level before his career was out.
Two years after Foreteller's win, another Chris Waller-trained import, He's Your Man, won the Winter Challenge and went on to win the Epsom Handicap before being nosed out in the Mackinnon Stakes.
The 2018 Winter Challenge was the first Australian win for Mister Sea Wolf, who end up a multiple Group winner in Australia and was placed in a Group 1 Canterbury Stakes.
Mugatoo never won a Group 1, but he followed his win in the 2020 Winter Challenge with wins in the Premier's Cup and Newcastle Cup before finishing second in The Metropolitan and fourth in the Cox Plate, then returning the following year to win the $5 million All-Star Mile.
Ciaron Maher and David Eustace, trainers of Gold Trip, not surprisingly targetted this year's race but are in need of scratchings with progressive Winning Rupert filly Semana the first emergency and Listed winner Chassis the fifth reserve.
Waller has five runners, including veterans Polly Grey and Bonny Ezra, this year's Magic Millions Fillies & Mares winner Brookspire, OTI import Longvillers and the only Group 1 winner in the race – South American recruit Iene Fortune.
The four-year-old son of Goldikovic has not started since winning a 2000m Group 1 race in Brazil in October 2021, which was his third win from six starts.
In-form Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott three-year-old Resonator, consistent Lindsay Park mare Barbie's Fox, Winter Stakes runner-up Acquitted – who will carry the Gold Trip colours – and Annabel Neasham's import Sibaaq are among the other leading contenders for the race that punches above its Listed status.
