If breeding is everything, look out. If it’s not, then what an arm wrestle this could be at Tuesday’s feature Kembla meeting.
Two lightly raced and exciting metropolitan fillies are set to lock horns in a Maiden Plate for the girls at set weights over 1200m.
Champion Australian mare Samantha Miss.Credit:Jenny Evans
And there won’t be a better bred runner anywhere in the world going around than at 3.05pm just a few minutes drive from Wollongong.
Impeccably bred Call Di returns to racing for just her third start after roaring home into a place in the Listed Reginald Allen over 1400m at Randwick during the spring carnival.
Bred and owned by Strawberry Hill Stud and based in the Gerald Ryan-Sterling Alexiou stable at Rosehill, Call Di’s pedigree is head-turning.
She is by unbeaten UK superstar and triple group 1 winner Frankel, and out of champion Australian mare Samantha Miss, whose three group 1 victories included two over the Randwick mile as a two and three-year-old, as well as the Oaks at Flemington over 2500m.
Samantha Miss was also twice a group 2 winner, and only finished out of a place once from 12 starts.
So whatever she does at Kembla, it seems logical Call Di will be targeted for much bigger races up to 2000m heading into autumn if all goes well in her first couple of runs back.
But out to lower the boom is a progressive filly from the John O’Shea stable reloading second-up in only her second prep.
Avebury, a daughter of 2004 Cox Plate winner Savabeel and out of the talented and lightly raced NZ mare O’Dianne, did her best work late, resuming in a strong Magic Millions Maiden at the Gold Coast 24 days ago.
The stable whipped her back to Sydney, where she has been ticking over in trackwork since.
Although Avebury hasn’t raced on anything under a Soft 5, she is well equipped to handle any dramatic downgrades if the weather turns nasty.
And significantly leading metro jockey Brenton Avdulla returns to the saddle nearly six months after he rode her to a long neck defeat on debut at this track.
