Weeding eyes Wodonga Gold Cup

CRAIG Weeding will be gunning for a Wodonga Gold Cup victory today with stable star Prince Of Helena ($7.50). After finishing back in the field in the $3 million Big Dance earlier this month, the eight-year-old gelding had a perfect lead up run to today’s $100,000 race, finishing second in the Tatura Cup last weekend. Weeding’s keen to see his star in action in the ideal grade. “It’s much more his grade these country cups,” Weeding said. “He ran well in the Tatura Cup, he led them up which he doesn’t normally do and then was run down late by a horse with much less weight. “He gets a nice weight reduction, is at his preferred distance and gets a good draw and if there’s a bit of rain on the track I think that will suit him as well.” Weeing has swapped Prince Of Helena’s racing pattern up a few times in recent starts but he expects hoop Jake Duffy to settle his gelding midfield. “He won’t lead like he did at Tatura,” he said. “You don’t want to get too far back at Wodonga though so I’d say we’ll be around midfield one of the rail, that would be ideal.” Weeding has another couple of chances across the day with Ruperts Red Rocket ($5.50) one of the leading chances in race four’s Ollie Cox Memorial benchmark 64 (2050m). The six-year-old gelding drops back in class after finishing four lengths away in a benchmark 70 at Moonee Valley last start and has drawn a nice gate (7). “Ruperts Red Rocket was good at the Valley off a slow tempos which had him reefing and tearing a little bit,” Weeding said. “We should get a strong tempo at Wodonga which will help him and he’s run well on a heavy before. “Our only concerns are that the furthest he’s got out to is a mile (1600m) but his mother won over 2000m so we think it’s worth a go at that distance.” Four-year-old mare Make It Sweet ($11) made waves through August when she won three races in a row before Weeding decided to freshen his rising star up. Coming off an eight week break, Make It Sweet will run in race seven’s benchmark 70 (1300m) but will have to get around a sticky gate 11. “We decided to give her a freshen up off her last run at Benalla,” Weeding said. “We were happy with her last run but we decided to give her a break and get her back for summer. “She’s doing really well but has drawn wide but with rain forecast it might be better for her to be off the rail by that late in the day anyway.” Weeding’s Mentalia ($23) has also been accepted into race eight’s benchmark 64 (1100m) but he may opt to scratch his four start youngster. “We’ll wait and see with Mentalia, he’s drawn wide and a wet track’s a bit of a query at this stage so we might scratch him,” he said. “It’ll depend what the weather’s doing.”

Weeding eyes Wodonga Gold Cup

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