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In-form Craig Martin four-year-old Jefferson Park looks set to continue his impressive recent run in the Benchmark 70 Hygain Spring Cup (1200m) at Tamworth this afternoon.
Photo by Racing and Sports
The son of Dream Ballad is in career-best form having won four of his last five, most recently landing a career-best rating when leading all the way at Mudgee over this trip.
He jumped from gate four on that occasion in Benchmark 65 company, went straight to the front and was never threatened. The run earned a weight-adjusted Timeform figure of 84.
Today he’s up in grade a fraction but sheds a kilogram and jockey Dale Spriggs will likely employ exactly the same tactics from gate two.
The track’s currently rated a Heavy 8 at Tamworth but that shouldn’t bother Jefferson Park who won his only other start in the wet, at Grafton back in July.
He’s super fit, in excellent form and on his home track where he has three wins and three minors from seven starts.
Might as well strike while the iron’s hot.
Midnight At Ascot made a pleasing return 11 days back at Wyong and poses the biggest danger today.
He finished 1.6L off the in-form Fort Sumter at Wyong in tougher than this, earning a weight-adjusted rating of 81.
The Darren Smith-trained seven-year-old is a three-time winner in the wet and gets the services of Robert Thompson today which is always a positive.
There are a couple of factors against though – he hasn’t on for 733 days now, and it’s very hard to break a streak like that with 60.5kg on your back.
Still, he has a class edge on the majority of these and deserves to be kept safe.
Monashee Woods is another local, prepared by Sue Grills, who is capable of running a decent race.
There isn’t a huge amount of depth in this one and he’s a fairly lightly raced six-year-old.
He hasn’t cashed a huge amount of prizemoney in four runs back this campaign, but he hasn’t been far off nonetheless.
He had excuses when 3.7L off here over 1400m two weeks ago when he had to be steadied early on to avoid the heels of another runner.
Two runs back he finished two lengths behind Jefferson Park, and he meets the top pick 4kg better off today.
That looks to give him a solid each-way chance, if he can handle the wet track.