3 minute read

Talented mare Snowdrop is progressing well toward a new preparation that could see her taking in the country’s top sprinters.

The well-related five-year-old dashed through the grades during her last campaign to take her record to six wins from 11 appearances.

“She’s been back in work here for about three weeks and she needs good tracks so there’s been no rush with her,” Cambridge trainer Tony Pike said.

“We’ll be targeting some of the good summer sprints with her. The Railway is set weights and penalties now so she won’t get in as well as a handicap, but if her form warrants it we’d have a go.”

Snowdrop was put aside after she easily claimed a Rating 85 event at Te Rapa in May, having also won her previous two appearances at Ellerslie and Trentham to be unbeaten this year.

Raced by her breeders Waikato Stud, she is daughter of Pins and the Matamata nursery’s dual Group One winner Daffodil.

Meanwhile, stablemate Chenille will be all the better for the trip away to Hastings last weekend to open her campaign.

As expected, the Pentire mare was outpaced over 1400 metres and Pike said she would be stepped up to a mile next time out in the Listed Team Wealleans Matamata Cup on October 8.

“After that she’ll hopefully build toward some of the good staying races,” he said.

Chenille, who won the Listed Hawke’s Bay Cup to close her last campaign, has the Gr.1 Barfoot & Thompson Auckland Cup as her longer-term aim and Pike also has a tentative plan beyond that in mind for the five-year-old.

“I think she’ll be an ideal type to take to Brisbane,” he said.