WATCH OUT FOR THE BIRCHLEY TOUCH IN THE 2YO JEWEL

By Graham Potter | Thursday, March 13, 2025

Trainer Liam Birchley has long held a special touch when it comes to the training of two-year-old horses, and he will be looking to add to his list of successes in that regard when he sends out Betterlucknexttime to contest the $500 000 QTIS Two-year-Old Jewel at the Gold Coast on Saturday.

The Gold Coast provided the venue of Birchley’s last big two-year-old race victory when he sent out Amosu to land the $500 000 The Debut race on Magic Millions Day with the filly clearly superbly primed for the occasion in which she had to show a tenacious fighting spirit, on top of digging deep into her talent bank, to prevail in a punishing stride for stride battle over the concluding stages on an energy sappy heavy racing surface.

You would expect that Birchley will have given Betterlucknexttime a similar, exact preparation.

Like Amosu, Betterlucknexttime was a winner on debut and then quickly made it back-to-back wins three weeks later … both wins coming at Doomben over the 1050m trip.

Two subsequent runs resulted in two fourth place finishes … again at Doomben, but this time both over the 1110m trip.

The smart Sunrays, who remains unbeaten after three career starts, and the more-than-useful Pretty Dubious finished first and second in the race in which Betterlucknexttime suffered his first defeat and then Pretty Dubious improved to win the Jewel Prelude, a race in which Betterlucknexttime again finished in fourth place.

Speaking to RaceQ, Birchley put that latest result in perspective.

“His last run was good under the weight conditions,” said Birchley. “He’ll drop a few kilos at the weights on Saturday, so I think he’ll be very well placed. He is set for this race. The plan was always to have him improving into the day.”

Putting numbers to clarify Birchley’s assessment, Betterlucknexttime carried 59.5kg in his last start when beaten to the line by 2.72 lengths. The winner, Pretty Dubious, carried 3.5kg less than the Birchley trained runner, a significant weight turnaround for a two-year-old.

These two runners will now meet at level weights on Saturday which you would think has to bring them closer together.

In spite of that weight turnaround, Betterlucknexttime is currently quoted at nearly double the odds of Pretty Dubious ($13 to $7). The leveling out at the weights, coupled with the fact that these two runners will jump from positions right next to each other in barrier’s seven and eight, suggest they will both have every chance to carry the day.

Not that it is a two-horse race by any means and the full sixteen horse field is likely to bring luck in the running into play more than might otherwise have been the case.
The horses currently level, or above Pretty Dubious in the betting are Grafterburners ($4.40), Boomshanka ($5.50) and Idyllic Affair ($7).

Kelly Schweida took Grafterburners from his home base in Brisbane to tackle the $2 million Inglis Millennium at Randwick in the colt’s last start where he finished a highly creditable fourth behind the unbeaten race winner Revellino. Grafterburners has drawn the carpark on Saturday (barrier sixteen).

The Tony Gollan trained Boomshanka and The Lee Freedman trained Idyllic Affair have both shown good promise … Boomshanka finishing second to Idyllic Affair in her debut outing while Idyllic Affair was winning there in her second start.

Boomshanka has drawn 13. Idyllic Affair is in at 5.

It’s two-year-olds though, where runners can improve out of sight in a short space of time and the likely soft going will possibly add another difficult to assess variable into the mix.

Expect it to be pretty keen out there.

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