Ken Casellas | Photo: Hamilton Content Creators
Wonderful To Fly, the State’s outstanding two-year-old filly in 2021, is fit and ready to make an impressive start to her three-year-old campaign when she resumes racing in the www.TheWest.com.au Pace at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
Part-owned, trained and driven by Shane Young, Wonderful To Fly has the ability to overcome the outside barrier (No. 9) over the 1730m sprint trip.
The winner at nine of her 16 starts last year, Wonderful To Fly ran a splendid trial at Pinjarra on Wednesday of last week. She was drawn on the outside of the front line and was out of position at the start before settling down in sixth place, about six lengths from the leader Dunamis.
She was still sixth at the bell and then she met with interference and lost a couple of lengths at the 950m. She then made up a lot of ground and went three wide on the home turn to finish strongly to be a close third behind Sovrana and Taking The Miki.
Taking The Miki also was checked at the 950m before finishing strongly, and she and Wonderful To Fly are sure to be prominent in Friday night’s race in which Taking the Miki (trained by Ross Olivieri and to be driven by Chris Voak) will start out wide at barrier eight.
Drawn inside of Taking the Miki and Wonderful To Fly are several smart fillies, including Beyond The Sea, Sonic Suzy, Dontbesillychilli, Sport Sport Sport, Make Your Mark and Jolted Charm.
Beyond The Sea, to be driven by Kyle Harper for trainer Murray Lindau, is in top form, having led and won convincingly at her past two starts, both over 2130m at Gloucester Park and from barriers three and one. She will start from the No. 6 barrier on Friday night.
Sonic Suzy, trained by Ron Huston and to be driven by Gary Hall jnr, will have admirers from her favourable barrier at No. 1. She warmed up for the race with a sound trial win over 2150m at Byford on Sunday morning.
Several Fremantle Cup hopefuls will contest the $25,000 Ray Duffy Memorial over 2536m, with champion trainer Gary Hall snr holding a strong hand with Chicago Bull (Gary Hall jnr, barrier six) and Wildwest (Callan Suvaljko, barrier two). Motu Premier is favourably drawn at barrier one and Chris Voak is likely to take advantage of the draw by using the nine-year-old gelding’s excellent gate speed to advantage in a bid to hold the lead from likely challengers Wildwest and Hampton Banner (barrier four).