In less than three months, Scarlet Oak has gone from a debut win in New Zealand to a Group 2 winner in Australia.
On Friday evening at Eagle Farm Racecourse in Brisbane, Scarlet Oak will be favored to win her Group 1 debut in the $466,600 Queensland Oaks at Eagle Farm Racecourse in her fifth start.
R1 6-9-3-5
R2 2-6-10-1
R3 4-5-7-1
R4 9-10-7-2
R5 8-9-3-12
R6 3-9-5-4
R7 11-10-1-6
R8 3-6-5-1
R9 3-11-6-4
Best Bet R7 N11 Chain Of Gold
Longshot R5 N8 Sight Supreme
Play R4 QQP 7-9-10
Mark McNamara:
R1 6.1.8.2
R2 5.6.4.3
R3 6.4.5.1
R4 7.10.9.3
R5 3.4.1.5
R6 3.4.2.11
R7 10.11.3.4
R8 3.9.12.1
R9 3.4.1.11
Best Bet R4 N7 So Treasure
Longshot R3 N6 Divine Shining
Play R3 Q/QP 4.5.6
Tom Wood:
Australia, Hong Kong or Japan, it does not matter. Romantic Warrior has won Group 1 or Grade 1 races in those countries in a five-race winning streak since October.
On Sunday, Romantic Warrior won the Grade 1 Yasuda Kinen Stakes at a mile on turf at Tokyo Racecourse in his first start in Japan. With the win, Romantic Warrior earned a fees-paid berth to the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Del Mar on Nov. 2.
Look de Vega on Sunday morning was a twice-started colt yet to run in a race of any consequence. By Sunday afternoon he was a Group 1 winner after winning the Prix du Jockey Club, the French Derby, at Chantilly Racecourse.
Look de Vega’s brief career and lack of high-class racing were of no consequence: The colt did everything right, looked like a winner a long way from home, and was much the best posting a two-length victory in a 14-runner field.
Aidan O’Brien trains for the global powerhouse Coolmore, for whom a primary focus is standing stallions, and thus among O’Brien’s responsibilities is training racehorses to win stallion-making races and to promote their talent and achievement. Sometimes the praise, understandably, has seemed excessive, and after champion 2-year-old City of Troy finished ninth of 11 in the 2000 Guineas, his 3-year-old debut, O’Brien continued insisting the colt was a star.
The hype is real.
A four-race winning streak is nothing new for Romantic Warrior, the Hong Kong-based gelding who will be favored to win his Japanese debut at Tokyo Racecourse in Sunday’s Grade 1 Yasuda Kinen Stakes at a mile.
Earlier in his career, Romantic Warrior reeled off five consecutive wins in Hong Kong in 2021 and 2022, finished fourth, and then won four consecutive starts later in 2022.
There are races where the outcome is in doubt even after the horses have crossed the finish, and there are others where a horse looks a sure winner long before that, and so it was Friday at Epsom Downs in the Oaks where Ezeliya, moving sweetly from start to finish, scored a three-length victory.
Ezeliya, under a patient ride from Chris Hayes, appeared to be the Oaks heroine a long way from home and became trainer Dermot Weld’s first Oaks winner in a good long time. Weld, 75, won his other Oaks in 1981 with a filly named Blue Wind.
Ace Impact, a brilliant winner of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October, only showed depth of his ability winning the Prix du Jockey Club at odds of nearly 9-1 in early June. Whoever comes out on top of this year’s renewal of France’s derby on Sunday at Chantilly is, like Ace Impact, a horse who has who has not yet revealed his potential.
