Blue Diamond Stakes Tips and Field Preview – 2017

The running of Victoria’s premier juvenile race, the Blue Diamond Stakes (Race 7) headlines a fantastic card of racing at Caulfield on Saturday.

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While the likes of Sepoy and Samaready have established their superiority in traditional lead-in races and dominated the market in recent times, this year’s crop look extremely even and the favourite is likely to go off at odds upwards of 5.00.

At the time of writing, unbeaten filly Catchy is the narrow market-elect with UniBet.com.au after overwhelming the useful Limestone in the dying stages of the Fillies Prelude here a fortnight ago.

While her chances took a bit of a hit after connections drew 13 at Tuesday’s barrier draw, it’s a decent pointer that Craig Williams has elected to ride her in preference to a couple of other leading chances in Jukebox and Property.

Indeed, one of the more interesting sub-plots to the race is the strength in depth of the Lindsay Park operation with punters left to weigh up the respective merits of the stable’s six-strong contingent.

After a soft win on debut at the Valley where she circled the field with ease, Tulip went the other way and was edged out by Limestone on Boxing Day but has had a decent let-up since.

Our gut feel is that she may have a bit more ability than Catchy though and with Damien Oliver aboard, she is fancied to figure in the finish.

With colts Muraahib and Will’s Bid tested in this company, the training partnership would instead have high hopes for the third of their fillies, Formality, who has shown commendable early speed to find the front and dictate proceedings in both of her starts to date.

Jukebox had a three-week break since landing the Inglis Premier and will look to give Ciaron Maher his first ever win in the event.

With early pacesetter Perast rolling off the fence around the turn, Jukebox didn’t have to go around another horse on his way to victory and despite another favourable draw (4), we feel he’s been a little flattered by that result and are keen to take him on.

Property, meanwhile, looked good in winning both the Colts Preview & Prelude here and will be partnered by the Hong-Kong based Joao Moreira.

Trainer Robert Smerdon would have been happy to see his charge lob in three but echoed the thoughts of many when suggesting that ‘there’s not much between half a dozen of them’.

With form out of those races typically standing up we’d clearly rank him as one of the main fancies but think his quote is about right and punters can get set with us.

Of the others, we’ve seen some early each-way interest at bigger prices for both Azazel and Wait For No One while Dwayne Dunn, who rode four successive winners in this race back in the Noughties, will partner Tony McEvoy’s Roomooz.

 

TIPS:

  1. Tulip
  2. Catchy
  3. Muraahib
  4. Formality
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