Atlantic Jewel is recovering from a back injury ahead of an autumn return

She’s the standout filly in a three year old crop touted by many as being the best in recent memory and the excitement around Atlantic Jewel is hard to contain.

While she’s easily the most dominant three year old filly in the country her real test will come when she takes on both the boys and open company.

It won’t be until autumn at the earliest though as she spells to recover from an injury sustained from the spring.

After winning the Wakeful Stakes by a full seven lengths Mark Kavanagh says she showed signs of soreness in her back.

“It’s a funny injury, they say it’s an unusual injury…not many horses are actually diagnosed with it,” he said.

“There were some hot spots there, so naturally enough there is an injury but the bone scans are clear.”

Kavanagh says while strange it’s not serious, in fact it may well be something many horses have.

“It’s probably a common injury that doesn’t get that bad but it’s not often diagnosed,” he said.

It will be a day by day assessment of Atlantic Jewel for her comeback starting with some basic exercise at the start of December.

“Another two weeks and we’ll start doing some light work with her and see where we go from there,” he said.

“The Melbourne autumn comes up very very quick but the Sydney autumn comes up a little far behind.”

With that you get the feeling that it could be a trip north for Atlantic Jewel next year but there are no guarantees.

“Right now if you asked me where she’s going to race I couldn’t tell you,” he said.

“We won’t be taking any risks, no sense in doing that, these horses don’t come along very often so we’ve got to look after what we have.”