She stayed the trip in this race last year, and she seems to be a bit stronger now. She has been running on strongly over the 1600m, and I think she will have no problem with 2000m, and in fact, may be looking for this trip now.
A bigger issue is the weight- last year she received 4.5 kg from Legal Eagle as the Challenge weights were finalized prior to her winning the Empress Club- this year she carries the Gr1 penalty of 2kg, so only gets 2.5kg from LE.
Deo Juvente had a good prep going into this race last year- this time he has had a disastrous trip to CT in the summer, where he ran horribly in the Premier and QP and did not contest his main mission, the Met. His only prep run has been in the Horse Chestnut where he was 8 L back. It is thus hard to see him running to the same level as last year, and he is now 1kg worse off with LE.
While I don’t believe that LE is quite as good over 2000m as he is over a mile, he is still the best horse in the race on exposed form at 2000m, and his prep appears spot on.
He will be very hard to beat, but second prize is R800k, which is more than the winning stake for most Gr1 races.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Bob Brogan, Federico
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