The $500,000 Inglis Banner (1000m) on Cox Plate day at Moonee Valley on Saturday has attracted a full field of Inglis sold youngsters with 13 unraced runners, plus emergencies so let’s take a look at them.
With very little trial form to go on it’s a lottery of a race and there are also quite a few runners by first season sires with Brutal, Blue Point (IRE), Cosmic Force, I Am Immortal and Royal Meeting (IRE) all represented.
Most expensive runner is Extreme Choice filly Chosen Legend that made $420,000 at Inglis Classic for Lime Country Thoroughbreds when purchased by Legend Racing.
Trained by Lloyd Kennewell and Lucy Yeomans, Chosen Legend won her only official trial at Cranbourne and has gate two with Zac Purton to ride. She is the first foal of Brisbane metro winner Lady No More with no stakes winners in the first three dams on the page, but go back a little to the fourth dam and that’s Lady Jakeo, who won a Group I MRC Blue Diamond Stakes and MVRC Australia Stakes.
Bred to win the race is the Lindsay Park trained Brazen Beau filly Bold Bastille, who is a three-quarter sister-in-blood to Inglis Banner winner Ideas Man. A $270,000 Inglis Premier purchase from Blue Gum Far for Lindsay Park Racing / Group 1 Bloodstock (FBAA), Bold Bastille is from stakes-winning Exceed and Excel mare Chloe in Paris, a half-sister to the dams of recent Group III winner She Dances and juveniles takes-winner Larimer Street, who is also by Brazen Beau.
Blue Point has sired 41 first crop winners in the Northern Hemisphere and has two runners with Lindsay Park to send out the filly Blue Allure and Tony and Calvin McEvoy to saddle Blue Stratum, a colt who is second emergency, but well fancied from gate three.
Another emergency to watch if it gets a run is the Liam Birchley trained Dream Smart, who has had one trial which was a second at Beaudesert to Accelar, who did everything but win when going down narrowly on debut last Saturday at Eagle Farm. She was a $60,000 Inglis Classic purchase from Corumbene Stud in the Highway session for her trainer and is a half-sister by Smart Missile to stakes-winner Alart and four other winners from good producer Al Sahra.