Brookspire looks to follow family success
Kembla Grange, G3 Carlton Draught Kembla Grange Classic, $200,000, 1600m
Progressive filly Brookspire (Hinchinbrook) is looking to join her half-siblings Inspirational Girl (NZ) (Reliable Man {GB}) and Ruettiger (Duporth) as a stakes winner when she steps up to black-type company for the first time in the G3 Kembla Grange Classic.
The Chris Waller-trained filly has had three starts, breaking her maiden at Randwick last December before going out for a break and returning with a third in a BM72 last time out. She looks ideally suited to this type of race second-up, with a view to the better fillies' races later in the autumn.
Elizabeel (Power {GB}) drops back in class off an excellent third in the G1 Surround S. last start, having finished fourth in the G2 Light Fingers S., the start prior. While she has only won two of 10 starts for John Sargent, she just doesn't know how to run a bad race and looks well placed at level weights with most of the field.
She gets 3kg off top weight Thermosphere (Exosphere), who is punished for her Group 3 and Group 2 wins earlier in her career. The James Cummings-trained filly has been a little below-par her past two but this looks an easier task than her recent assignment in the Surround S.
Thermosphere
The Mark Newnham-trained Miravalle (Redoute's Choice) also took on the Surround last time, and will undoubtedly come on for that first-up performance. She was close-up in a few top-class fillies races last spring, although has only one win from eight starts.
The two fillies who could surprise are both from the Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott stable in Nothinsweetaboutme (So You Think {NZ}) and Vittoriosa (NZ) (Vancouver).
Nothinsweetaboutme has won both of her starts from on the pace and hails from a family full of stakes winners, while Vittoriosa also likes to make her own luck, having won at Goulburn and then just been run down at Hawkesbury. Both are drawn well and may give their more experienced rivals something to chase in the latter stages of the race.
