Tina’s Rock ready to roll opponents at Gosford meeting

She’s been placed only once from eight starts, but an unfashionable home track mare is out to pull off the biggest upset at Tuesday’s feature Gosford meeting.

Tina’s Rock, behind a well-beaten second place at Newcastle 11 days ago, lines up in a Maiden Hcp over 1900m for long-serving local trainer Kylie Gavenlock.

After four slowly improving runs back from a spell, Tina’s Rock won’t get a better chance to break the duck wearing the renowned colours of Lightning Thoroughbreds.

And while the four-year-old daughter of Pierro is hard fit, and drops to the limit 55kg for the first time since an inauspicious debut back in January, she has to topple early hot favourite Desert Spring who was scratched from Monday’s Scone meeting by the powerhouse Maher-Eustace stable to be saved for this.

Desert Spring, a progressive four-year-old son of American Pharoah, is stretching out a further 400m at only his third start after missing narrowly at Hawkesbury 19 days ago.

Meanwhile, one of the more exciting short-course sons of 2016 Golden Slipper winner Capitalist returns to the track for a first-up strike in a Maiden Plate for the boys over 1100m.

Captain Bond, a lightly raced three-year-old in the Gerald Ryan and Sterling Alexiou camp and owned by the popular Vieira family, hasn’t started since an unplaced metropolitan run as a two-year-old in mid-May.

But an extended break and being gelded looks to have lit the fuse on this potential powerhouse sprinter judging from a Rosehill trial two weeks ago when he led the field home by nearly six lengths.