2008 Sandown Guineas – 15 November 2008

This week is the last of Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival and the feature races are the Sandown Guineas and the Sandown Classic. This year the meeting is being held on the Hillside course. Sandown will be known as Betfair Park for the next three years under a sponsorship deal between the Melbourne Racing Club and global betting exchange Betfair.

The $350,000 Group 2 Betfair Sandown Guineas over 1600 metres is race 6 on Sandown’s nine-race card. The set-weight race has attracted a field of eleven three-year-olds, including two fillies.

The early market has two horses sharing favouritism at $3.60. These are the Danny O’Brien trained Lucky Thunder and the Peter Snowden trained Caymans. Both of them have five career starts for one win and three placings. Lucky Thunder came second in the 1600 metre Carbine Club Stakes on Derby Day at his last start, while Caymans finished fourth.

Next in the betting at $5 is the filly Marveen who won her last start over 1400 metres on 4 November. The David Hayes trained Stokehouse is at $6 in the early market. He had an excellent win over 1800 metres on 6 November.

Arjuna is currently at $9. He was run down by Drumbeats in the Hilton International Stakes last week and is stepping up to 1600 metres for the first time.

Clare Lindrop will be riding Ooleo for Leon Mcdonald. Ooleo won three of his first seven starts in South Australia, but has run sixth and ninth in his Victorian runs, although there have been excuses for him.

Fillies have a good record in the race with three of the seven past winners being fillies. This is quite an impressive statistic when you consider that in most years very few fillies run. Past winners have come from many different lead up races, however, 15 of the last 20 winners had finished first or second at their most recent race.

by Jo Jackson