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Trainer Anthony Cummings will line up multiple runners in a bid to win Saturday's G3 Run To The Rose for the second time in three years at Rosehill on Saturday.
Photo by Racing and Sports
With better luck Cummings could have been chasing a hat-trick of victories in Saturday's $125,000 event over 1200m after striking the champion colt Pierro last year.
Cummings won the Run to the Rose in 2011 with Smart Missile and last year had to be content with second place when his subsequent G1 winner Your Song was a brave second to Pierro.
Cummings has high hopes of another win on Saturday with the promising Cluster and Never Can Tell to tackle a classy field of contenders for next month's $1 million Golden Rose.
Cluster stamped himself as a genuine Golden Rose contender when he was ridden by Hugh Bowman to finish an unlucky second to Va Pensiero in the G3 San Domenico Stakes (1100m) at Rosehill on August 17 at only his second career start.
Never Can Tell, winner of the Listed Canonbury Stakes at Rosehill in February, also resumed in the San Domenico where he finished a close up fifth.
The Cummings pair are among 15 entries for the Run to the Rose headed by the exciting Eurozone, the unbeaten rising star trained by Bart and James Cummings, Chris Waller's boom colt Zoustar, Peter Snowden's Golden Slipper runner-up Sidestep and San Domenico winner Va Pensiero.
Bowman is sticking with Eurozone on Saturday, opening the door for Peter Robl to team with Cluster.
Snowden has decided to put the blinkers back on Sidestep on Saturday with his Golden Slipper rider Kerrin McEvoy back to replace his San Domenico rider Tommy Berry.
Sidestep wore blinkers when he finished second in the Golden Slipper in April and Snowden is certain that will help him race truly over the same course and distance on Saturday after striking plenty of trouble when fourth in the San Domenico.
“The interference cost him dearly,” Snowden said.
“He had to stop, pull back and change course. To finish as close as he did was a good effort.”
Jim Cassidy will ride Zoustar while Tim Clark has elected to ride the Peter Moody trained Dissident despite winning the San Domenico on Va Pensiero.
Other runners will include Windjammer (Glyn Schofield), Ike's Legacy (Blake Shinn), Criterion (Christian Reith) and the Gai Waterhouse-trained Equator.