A Look At The Group 1 Stradbroke Handicap

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Dawn Passage

STRADBROKE HANDICAP

  • Group One
  • 1400m handicap
  • Eagle Farm

HISTORY

  • First run in 1890 (winner Pyrrhus)
  • 1890-1953 run over six furlongs (1200m)
  • Winners include Wiggle (1958), Persian Lyric (1961), Kilshery (1962), Winfreux (1965), Divide And Rule (1970), Triton (1972), (1984, 1986), Campaign King (1988), Rough Habit (1991-92), Dane Ripper (1997), Show A Heart (2002), Black Piranha (2009-10), Santa Ana Lane (2018)
  • In 2015, 2017 and 2018 the race was run over 1350m at

TALKING POINTS

  • One of only two Group One races to be run during this year's revised Queensland winter because of the impacts of pandemic
  • Prize money reduced this year from $1.5 million to $350,000
  • Trekking aiming to win his second-straight Stradbroke
  • Trekking is also striving for back-to-back Group One wins having taken out The Goodwood in Adelaide at his most recent start last month
  • In-form Sydney three-year-old Dawn Passage has the outside draw but is the pre-race favourite to give co-trainer Gai Waterhouse her first Stradbroke
  • Last year's winner Exhilarates aiming to become first three-year-old filly since La Montagna (2006) to win Stradbroke
  • James Innes Jr (Dawn Passage) and Blake Spriggs () are the only two interstate-based jockeys competing in this year's race
  • (Niconova), Justin Huxtable () and Jake Bayliss () have permission to ride 0.5kg over their horse's allocated weight. Sean Cormac (Graff) and Jag Guthmann-Chester (3rd em Bandipur) have permission to ride 1kg over

WHAT THE KEY PLAYERS ARE SAYING

  • “The top weight is somewhat balanced by having the services of an accomplished senior jockey, riding at full strength. Obviously he's drawn wide in a big field and I'm not sure what to make of that. He won the race last year with 54kg and he's won a Group Two and a Group One since then and his form line is excellent,” – Trekking's trainer James Cummings
  • “She's done a great job this preparation. She had her first run (of the preparation) in November and put in a career-best last start so she's certainly not showing any signs of dipping in form either,” – Bam's On Fire's co-trainer
  • “He's won both his runs this time in and he drops to 50 kilos. He's up a fair bit in grade but I think that pull in the weights and that good draw is going to take him a long way to give him his best chance,” – Hightail's trainer Peter Snowden

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