Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Deni Roberts has been driving in brilliant form this year and she is looking forward to achieving a significant milestone by driving Brulee to victory in the opening event at Gloucester Park on Friday night to bring up her one hundredth winner for the season.
The 27-year-old Roberts faces a busy evening with nine drives on the eleven-event program — and she considers that the Barry Howlett-trained Brulee is her best winning prospect when the three-year-old filly begins from the No. 2 barrier in the 2130m Beau Rivage For Buffet Dining Pace.
“Brulee is very tough and is in excellent form,” said Roberts who went close to landing her first century of winners for a season when she ended 2022 with 98 winners and 216 placings.
This year she has had 481 drives for 99 wins and 112 placings, and her career record stands at 449 wins.
After Brulee was unplaced at her first five starts she has blossomed, with her next 13 starts producing four wins, five seconds and four thirds.
Brulee has revealed wonderful fighting qualities throughout her career, and particularly at her two most recent appearances — when she sustained a powerful three-wide burst from the rear to win the group 3 Diamond Classic on May 19 and then two weeks later when she raced three wide early, moved the breeze after 550m and fought on with grim determination to win by a head from the pacemaker Our Lililou.
Her most serious rival on Friday night looms large as the polemarker, the Katja Warwick-trained Fly To Fame, a winner of four races and an eye-catching last-start third behind Brulee and Our Lililou when she surged home, out wide, from ninth at the bell.
Fly To Fame also possesses good gate speed and is an accomplished frontrunner.
Our Liilou, trained by Kim Prentice, will start from the No. 5 barrier and will be driven for the first time by Stuart McDonald, who replaces part-owner Corey Peterson, who has driven the filly at her past six starts, including her last-start second to Brulee.
Peterson will handle Seagrass, a Sunshine Beach filly who recently entered his Blythewood stables and impressed at Northam last Saturday night when she was driven by Roberts when she led from barrier two and won by a length from Jackie Daniels over 2190m.
Capel trainer-reinsman Aiden De Campo is hoping for an improved showing from his talented filly Between Two Thorns, who is awkwardly drawn at barrier seven.
“She was disappointing last start (when fifth behind Flametree on May 9),” said De Campo. “We have found a few problems with her, and hopefully they have been fixed.”