The CD all-weather races have been challenging for handicapping recently - given a limited pool of horses, varied profiles, and a diverse rating spread.

Opawa Jack (rating 90) is an ineresting entry for Thursday – a quality galloper resuming over 1000m.

He doesn’t have a deep CV on the synthetic but has won twice on the surface and was topweight (60kgs) in the Cambridge $100,000 2000m race last year when 4^th. That was clearly a stronger race as maidens are entered here.

For alignment, it is appropriate he is weighted higher than Jack Morrison (6 wins, all synthetic, rating 79, 64.5kgs), but lower than prolific all-weather winner Lhasa (6 synthetic wins, also Open win on turf, 92 rating) – who has reached 67.5kgs.

After assessing his synthetic profile and overall form he has been assigned 65.0kgs.

It is a balance of trying to encourage participation of both the high-rating horses and the opposition.

(As a guide 0.5kg = ½ length at 1600m, with discussions generally landing on less of a margin over shorter distances and stretching for longer races.)

Elsewhere, Sir Mikki (rating 71) dropped one point for his 6^th last start and drops 0.5kg here to 60.5kg.

For all other races the standard benchmark topweight of 60.0kgs is appropriate.

Note: Above weights are “indicative” and subject to change given late entries of withdrawals. Weights will be posted as “official” at 9.00am tomorrow (15 July).