Brazen Beau will represent Australia when he contests the 2015 Diamond Jubilee Stakes during the Royal Ascot Meeting in June and trainer Chris Waller is happy with where he has the talented sprinter ahead of the testing trip to England.
Brazen Beau has returned to training to begin preparations for the 2015 Diamond Jubilee Stakes. Photo by: Adrienne Bicknell
Brazen Beau guaranteed that he would make the trip to Royal Ascot when he upstaged Chautauqua, Terravista and Lankan Rupee to win the Group 1 Newmarket Handicap (1200m) at Flemington on March 14 and Waller told Sky Racing HQ that he has done everything possible to give the I Am Invincible colt the best possible chance to take out the Group 1 event.
“He had approximately ten days off out at the farm,” Waller said.
“The farm he is staying at is quiet unique, it is called The Hermitage and it has an uphill straight that is very similar to most of the tracks in England and it has quite a significant uphill rise.
“He did quite a bit of his work there prior to coming to Melbourne in the autumn and he is quiet familiar with it.
“We are going to use it as a training tool to get him ready for that tough uphill straight at Ascot.
“He has had a couple of three quarter pace gallops, he came back into the stable at Rosehill this week and he is going to do a little bit more training here with us and then we will probably finish things off out at the farm, which will include a jump-out up the straight about three and a half weeks before he leaves.
“Then I would like to give him a really strong one similar to a race either back out at the farm on the uphill track and get in touch with Robert Smerdon (with Shamal Wind) to see if he wants to have a jump out at Flemington.
“It will certainly be a benefit to have all the work done before we get there and hopefully everything is done, so he can just go over there, relax and perform and represent Australia well.”
Brazen Beau stamped himself as one of the best sprinters in Australia with his Newmarket Handicap victory, but Waller did not give the three-year-old the chance to win at weight-for-age level in the Group 1 T.J. Smith Stakes (1200m) at Royal Randwick on April 6.
Waller said that he was delighted with the decision not to run Brazen Beau in the T.J. Smith Stakes and he believes that the colt would have failed to perform at his best on the wet surface that was present for the Group 1 sprint.
“I am so happy we did because he doesn’t like wet tracks and if we ran him in the T.J.it would have been hard to see him perform at his best on that track.
“You can’t just keep having them peaking and you have got to say this is the race I am set for and fortunately we did because I think we are in a lot better position than last year with Zoustar, who ran in the Canterbury, went poorly and we were just on catch-up from that point on.
“He wasn’t going into the race the right way and as a result we aborted the trip.”
Brazen Beau will have the chance to join Choisir (2003), Starspangledbanner (2010) and Black Caviar (2012) as Australian winners of the Diamond Jubilee Stakes
