Super St Leger Final awaits at Angle Park
Red Hot St Leger Final
Another excellent night of racing is expected at Angle Park on Thursday night, with the showcase being the $10,000 to the winner, St Leger final.
Four terrific heats were staged last week, with the winners being Blue Intensity for Kirin Corby (31.03), Peaky Boo (30.43) and Riot Rooster (30.61) for Ben Rawlings, and Fantastic Ada (30.76) for Liz Chegia.
Without a doubt, the Rawlings kennel will play a formidable hand in the final, with three in the race, which includes Ferocious Ivy who ran second in her heat, however she has come up with box one in the final.
One chaser who will be hoping to try and upset the Rawlings trio is the Liz Chegia trained Fantastic Ada, who was super impressive in her heat run last week.
Having her fourth run since a short freshen up, she drew box eight and used it to perfection, staying up the track and producing a grinding effort, to overturn Zinfandel Evie in a thriller. Her overall time was quite impressive given the amount of ground she covered, which her co trainer, Oswald Chegia agrees with.
“I think it was a good run, considering she was caught four wide all the way. It’s going to be very tough in the final.” said Chegia
Having already tasted feature race success, claiming the Murray Bridge Oaks back in December, Fantastic Ada will be hoping to add to it, but will face a tough task having drawn box six.
Whilst she can handle a wide, the hard part for her will be crossing the speed below, which she will need to do if she is to win, with Chegia conceding that she does face an uphill battle.
“We’re happy with the box draw.” said Chegia
“If she can get away without trouble, that’s what we need. You’ve always got to give them some hope but there's some good dogs in there.”
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Jason Newman and Melissa Freitag have got their team up and going at the moment and their kennel is being led by the airborne Send It Blue, who returns to Angle Park in an attempt to make it 6 wins in a row.
Since running a terrific second at Angle Park back in December, Send It Blue has gone on to put together a sensational run of form, which Newman partly credits to him coming down to race at Angle Park.
“We’ve changed very little with him, the only thing that has changed was taking him to Angle Park and it was like something clicked and that he realised he can move early now!” said Newman
“That second he ran first up at Angle Park was enormous, from then he’s just been a different dog in running, I think he’s learnt to kick off the rail and not wait for it now, he kind of used to run into traffic all of the time.”
Send It Blue will attempt to take out a grade 5 over the 595m distance, which has drawn together a handy field. From box two, the black dog will be hoping to get some early luck, before calling upon his excellent strength and midrace pace, to make a move. Newman believes it’s an even field, but has full faith in his chasers ability to take it out.
“I think it’s a pretty even race across the field. I think Max Rocha leads off the one and we just want to slip right behind him. Damien’s (Make Noise) can run a fair bit, so I’m interested to see what he can do over the distance. Then out wide the rest of them have plenty of talent as well. He’s (Send It Blue) just in amazing form and running serious time, but he still needs luck early, but I know for sure the distance won’t worry him!” said Newman
Racing will start at 6:33pm local time.
Best Bets:
Dark Thrill (Race 2, Number 6)
Fantastic Helga (Race 9, Number 1)