The HDR stable has two runners today in HELEVA DEEL and GAIUS at Benalla.
Benalla – Soft (5)
The track has come up a Soft 5 after 14mm of irrigation and 14mm of rainfall for the week. Benalla can often favour those off fence a touch when the track gets into the soft range, so watch out for any pattern that may emerge as the meeting unfolds. The track itself is 1879m in circumference and features a 380m home straight that generally gives backmarkers a chance to run into the race. The 1100m start isn’t that far from the sweeping home bend so it’s important to find a spot early. (Form Analyst Matt Welsh)
RACE 7 (4:30pm) bet365 Odds Drift Protector Class 2 Handicap 1106m
No.2 GAIUS– Mitch Aitken (Barrier 9)
GAIUS (9) heads to Benalla on Tuesday where he will contest an 1106m Class 2 (Race 7, 4.30pm). He has drawn gate nine and Mitch Aitken will ride.
GAIUS won a pretty handy BM64 first up at Terang, holding off the fast-finishing Lake Tai who has subsequently run quite well. He controlled the race up near a moderate tempo there, booting home in the second-best last 200m split of the entire meeting. Don’t mind him dropping back in trip slightly off a 25-day break between runs and a little tick-over jump-out at Ararat looked to be nothing more than a maintenance gallop, with him not asked to do much. The outside gate is a touch sticky but with not much speed drawn underneath the best ploy for Aitken might be to be positive out of the machine and attempt to get up outside the speed. (Matt Welsh)
The form coming out of GAIUS’ has proven fairly strong which is a positive coming into this. The track has been watered and received natural irrigation lately so hopefully the ground will chop out towards the inside and allows Mitch to work into the race and storm down the outside. (Stable)
TAB WIN Fixed Odds – $9 (as at 11am)
RACE 8 (5:00pm) Denis O’brien Memorial BM58 Handicap 2040m
No.3 HELEVA DEEL– Mitch Aitken (Barrier 4)
HELEVA DEEL (10) heads to Benalla on Tuesday where she will contest a 2040m BM58 (Race 8, 5.00pm). The daughter of Dundeel has drawn gate four and Mitch Aitken will ride.
Coming off an impressive win at Kyneton last start, Heleva Deel steps up in distance here today. She looks like she has been looking for this distance and she draws extremely well. There is some good speed in the race from both inside and outside of Heleva Deel. So with this hopefully she can settle 4th or fifth and be storming down the outside like last start. (Stable)
TAB WIN Fixed Odds – $4 (as at 11am)