ORANGE looks set to have two strong chances in Friday’s $25,000 Allandale Park Stud Cup Benchmark 65 Handicap, following yesterday’s bumper nominations.
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The 1400-metre main race in Racing Orange’s opening meeting for the 2014-15 season, Friday’s rich Allandale Park Stud Cup will be run as a make-up race for last year’s Orange Cup, a $50,000 run that was postponed in April and later abandoned after heavy rain put a damper on the end of the last racing season at Towac Park.
But with both Belfrey Bat nominating and Cool Days’ connections also indicating the four-year-old brown gelding will make the jump up a class, Racing Orange executive officer Daniel Brincat was rapt there’s a chance local trainers will bring the season in with a bang.
“There’s a good chance we’ll have two strong hopes in the Cup,” Brincat enthused.
Belfrey Bat is a last-start winner for Lee Van Den Bos, while the Brian Buckley-prepared Cool Days enjoyed a first-up win for the Orange trainer after arriving at Towac Park from the Gai Waterhouse stables.
Both will run against tough opposition in the form of Peter Nester’s Private Taber and Scene Of The Crime, a seven-year-old gelding prepared in Canberra by Matt Dale.
“Sometimes you can pull out the form book and there’s a lot of city trainers, but I think this meeting we’ve got a good mix, which is pleasing for us,” Brincat added.
“The idea behind the main race is because our Cup race last season was washed out, and this $25,000 is just to lift the prize for our industry participants this week.”
Across Friday’s eight-race program, 145 nominations were registered in total.
Brincat said nominations for three of the TAB meeting’s races - including the Allandale Park Stud Cup - will likely be extended until 11am this morning.
Formally based out of Towac Park but now firmly entrenched at the Tyres Park stables in Bathurst, Peter Stanley’s King Derota has won its last two starts in Mudgee and Bathurst respectively to carry outstanding form into the $25,000 feature race and Brincat says is another chance on Friday.
Acceptances for all eight races will be declared tomorrow morning. The first meeting of the Racing Orange season will be run on Friday at Towac Park
