George Main Stakes Day Scratchings: The Shorts Field Down to 5

Just five runners remain in this afternoon’s The Everest lead-up with six horses withdrawn from The Shorts field as part of the official 2019 George Main Stakes Day scratchings at Royal Randwick.

Dual The Everest champion Redzel is one of just five remaining runners in the 2019 The Shorts field at Randwick. Photo: Steve Hart.

Randwick Track Report – 21/09/2019

Rail: True
Penetrometer: 5.91
Weather: Fine
Track Type: Turf
Track Rating: Soft (7)
Irrigation: Nil
Rainfall: Nil last 24 hrs; 82.mm last 7 days

There are 34 official scratchings from across the nine-race card for George Main Stakes Day in Sydney after connections of a host of horses were scared off by the Heavy-rated track earlier in the week.

With fine weather in Sydney for race day however and no rain forecast until late in the afternoon, the recently upgraded Randwick track rating of a Soft (7) looks set to remain.

It will still be a day where the punters come for the proven wet-trackers, although the change from a Heavy to Soft rating opens up betting on the remaining horses.

The race hardest hit by the Sydney race scratchings is the Group 2 $500,000 The Shorts (1100m) with six of the 11 final acceptors withdrawn from the sprint feature.

Many of the confirmed runners in next month’s $14 million The Everest (1200m) have been scratched with owners not wanting to give their gallopers a gut-buster on a mud track ahead of the world’s richest turf race.

The Shorts race scratchings are: #1 Santa Ana Lane, #4 Osborne Bulls, #5 Viridine, #8 In Her Time, #9 Sunlight and #11 Jonker.

It will still be an interesting race from a The Everest 2019 perspective with two-time Everest champion Redzel at $3.40 in The Shorts betting at Ladbrokes.com.au.

He follows Pierata ($2.40) who is now the race favourite, while the returning Classique Legend is the other danger at $3.50.

The meeting’s marquee race is the Group 1 $500,000 George Main Stakes (1600m) running as Race 7 and there are two scratchings from the field.

Run as the Colgate Optic White Stakes, the weight-for-age feature is down to nine runners with Chris Waller withdrawing Life Less Ordinary (9), while the Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott-trained Con Te Partiro (11) came out to run in Friday’s Group 3 Cameron Handicap (1500m) at Newcastle where he finished a disappointing 10^th.

Earlier in the day the Flight Stakes-bound fillies face off in the Group 2 Tea Rose Stakes field where there are three confirmed scratchings led by the Godolphin-raced Flit.

See below for the full Randwick race scratchings in Sydney and official jump times for the George Main Stakes Day races before backing your spring selections at Ladbrokes.com.au.