THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN: VICTORY STAKES CONTENDERS HAVE A LOT TO LIVE UP TO

By Graham Potter | Saturday, May 23, 2020

Group 2 racing takes centre stage this weekend as the Queensland Winter Carnival, with its vastly reduced feature race schedule, because of Covid 19, continues at Eagle Farm on Saturday.

The Victory Stakes field has a lot to live up to.

Previous winners of this event include Buffering (who won four Queensland Horse of the year titles to go with his $7 million in prize-money) and Srikandi (who went on the win the Stradbroke) while the likes of Redzel (who won back to back editions of The Everest which helped push his career earnings to $17.2 million) could only finish second in the race.

Go back nearly three decades and you will find the mighty Rough Habit (who would end up with two Stradbrokes amongst his haul of eleven Group 1 wins) on the Victory Stakes honour roll … so this is a race with a grand history.

Whether any of the runners on Saturday can go on to replicate the deeds of those horses mentioned above is a matter that will be decided in the future but for now the immediate interest in the race will extend beyond the actual result to the analysing of the performances of a host of 2020 Stradbroke contenders who will form the bulk of the Victory Stakes line-up when the field faces the starter.

Reduced carnival or not, it is prime time viewing for Queensland Racing and the interest in which horses are coming on at the right time, who is going backwards and who standing still is as much in play as ever.

That interest will also add special focus to the other Group 2 on the card … the Champagne Classic.

It is always an attraction when promising two-year-olds come together to sort themselves out and two of the best two-year-olds in Queensland, amongst others, will face off in the Champagne Classic.

The filly Isotope will be defending her unbeaten record which kicked off with a ten-length demolition job on debut and an equally impressive 2.30 length win in her second start.

For his part Rothfire has won four out of five starts. This sets up an intriguing clash between these two runners although it is not necessarily a race in two with Snowden and Godolphin stables, who have runners involved, certainly not just making up the numbers.

Again, like the Victory Stakes runners going into the Group 1 Stradbroke, the Champagne Classic will performances will have relevance moving ahead into Group 1 JJ Atkins.

So, while things are different to usual, while the really big Winter Carnival prize-money has disappeared, while a raft of feature races have been sidelined, while there are less interstate and New Zealand trainers making the trip and while most of the top jockeys down south are expected to stay at home instead of heading north, this racing for the winter of 2020 is going to be as good as it gets.

As such, racing enthusiasts should set about enjoying it as much as they can because, as we have all found out during these extraordinary times, life is really what you make it!

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