All Aged Stakes Tips & Preview 2024
Champagne Stakes Tips & Preview 2024
Looking for Champagne Stakes tips and best bets? We dissect times and form to find the winner of the 2024 Champagne Stakes at Randwick.
CHAMPAGNE STAKES BETTING SNAPSHOT
It is the last start Inglis Sires (1400m) winner, Manaal, that is the $2.30 favourite with PlayUp in her quest to make it back to back Group 1 victories. She just shades the unbeaten John O’Shea colt, Linebacker, who is at $2.70.
The impressive last start Godolphin winner, Broadsiding, is at $6, while Anode is another under double figures at $7. There are a total of eight acceptors for the $1 million affair for the two-year-olds and Fearless at $14 and El Castello at $34 are given some hope, while In Her Eyes ($51) and Tenbury Wheels ($126) are the roughies in the race.
CHAMPAGNE STAKES FORM ANALYSIS
Linebacker is the fresh horse on the scene in terms of career starts, having faced the starter just twice. The John O’Shea-trained galloper is the least experienced in the field, alongside El Castello.
The son of Super Seth has won his two starts, dominating his rivals at Hawkesbury back in February before getting the upper hand late over Broadsiding in the Ballieu (1400m). The runner-up out of that has since come out and claimed the Fernhill Handicap (1600m) by two lengths.
Linebacker went 5.2 lengths faster than standard benchmark at his most recent start, which is the best last start figure of any runner. He settled handy and kept coming at the business end.
In comparison, Manaal likes to get back and produced the fastest last 200m in the Golden Slipper (1200m) to place 5th before coming out and again finishing strongly with the best late split to claim the Group 1 Sires Produce Stakes (1400m) ahead of Traffic Warden.
The Michael Freedman-trained galloper went 4.4 lengths faster than standard benchmark, slightly lower than her peak of 7.4 lengths faster, which came over the 1100m at her first run of this campaign.
Fearless and Anode are the other two to come out of the Inglis Sires and placed 6th and 7th respectively. Anode led before fading on the Heavy track. The Team Snowden-trained galloper just missed behind Linebacker prior to that when pipped late in the piece. That came at Rosehill on March 30 on a Good track. Fearless was stepping up from a Newcastle Maiden win and couldn’t quite go with them at the business end.
It might pay to keep an eye on the forecast in the lead up to Saturday. Things are a bit hit and miss with between 0 and 20mm of rain forecast and at the time of writing, Randwick is a Good 4.
Broadsiding, El Castello and Tenbury Wells are all on the one-week back-up after racing in the Fernhill Handicap last weekend. Broadsiding produced the fastest last 200m to defeat El Castello by more than two lengths. The Godolphin galloper went 2.5 lengths faster than standard benchmark, with that coming off a slow tempo.
Pace in this race could be a tad muddling with a few genuine backmarkers in action. Anode is a likely leader, while Linebacker and El Castello have both shown that they like to settle handy. Manaal and Broadsiding are among those that like to get back.
CHAMPAGNE STAKES TIPS AND BEST BETS
I am going with the Group 1 form and it is Manaal that should be hard to beat. She did the job for us when we tipped her at $6 in the Inglis Sires and there is no major reason to jump off now. The daughter of Tassort gives every indication that she will thrive over further ground and has produced the fastest last 200m at her last two starts, which have both been in the majors for her age group. A slight concern is the small field and a potential lack of tempo but she showed plenty of class to overcome that in the Sires, while she will be ridden by Jamie Kah, who was excellent at Randwick last weekend with two winners from her six rides.
