Adelaide Cup for Tralee Rose

Group Three winner Tralee Rose is set to return to South Australia for a second tilt at the Gr.2 Adelaide Cup (3200m).

The daughter of Tavistock finished fourth in the race in March last year where she was a beaten $1.85 favourite after winning five of her six starts in the lead-up.

She continued her good run of form last spring, winning the Gr.3 Geelong Cup (2400m) and placing in the Gr.3 Naturalism Stakes (2000m), Listed Heatherlie Stakes (1700m) and Gr.3 Bart Cummings (2520m).

She finished ninth in the Gr.1 Melbourne Cup (3200m) last year and has had just the four runs since, including tilts at the Gr.1 Caulfield (2400m) and Melbourne Cups and trainer Symon Wilde is hoping a drop in grade will benefit his mare.

“She’s just come back into work, we’re going to aim at the Adelaide Cup,’’ Wilde said.

“She’s had a bit of bad luck here and there in a couple of these Melbourne Cup campaigns so we’re going to drop the bar a little bit and I think it’s a really nice race for her.

“She’s our only one that’s at that level. You hope things go a bit smoother than they have, but that’s racing, we understand that and we’re grateful to have a good horse like her. ­

“There would be nothing wrong with aiming at an Adelaide Cup and I think she’d be a really good chance in a race like that. She’ll go to Adelaide for all three runs, the lead-up races are all two weeks apart and it’s a good program for her.”

Tralee Rose was purchased by Cameron Cooke Bloodstock for $50,000 out of the Cambridge Stud draft at the 2018 New Zealand Bloodstock Karaka Yearling Sale.

Australian Cup target for Hezashocka

A tilt at the Gr.1 Australian Cup (2000m) is on the cards for Hezashocka after his pleasing spring campaign.

The son of Shocking placed in his last two starts of his preparation, including running third behind Zaaki and Mo’unga in the Gr.1 Champions Stakes (2000m) at Flemington last month.

Trainers Mick Price and Michael Kent Jnr are excited about the prospects of the New Zealand-bred five-year-old and believe he is capable of a Group One scalp.

“Had he gone straight he may have won the race on the last day of the carnival,” Kent told RSN.

“He is a horse that has really improved and he will go the Blamey (Gr.2, 1600m) into the Australian Cup. He is an exciting horse.”

Hezashocka was initially purchased out of Grangewilliam Stud’s 2019 New Zealand Bloodstock Book Three Yearling Sale draft by Shaun Clotworthy for $18,000.

The Byerley Park horseman trained the son of Shocking in partnership with his wife Emma to win the Gr.2 Championship Stakes (2100m) at Ellerslie in April last year before his subsequent sale to Australia, however, the couple remain in the ownership of the horse who carries the silks of OTI Racing.