\u201cBut yes, it was a surprise to see her open favourite over some of those bigger-stable horses.\u201d<\/p>\n
War Princess has only raced three times and is a natural speedster who bolted away with her first two races before Didham went to a Sires\u2019 Produce Stakes he always had doubts about.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen they are winning like that and you have a Group 1 up for grabs, you go for it but I\u2019ll admit I thought it might be a bridge too far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Which brings us to tomorrow\u2019s feature and a race Didham admits could be a bridge too early.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love this race to be in another couple of weeks,\u201d he told the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has had one trial and won it well and it was quite a good field.\u201d <\/p>\n
Didham said War Princess \u201cmight be able to get away with it fresh-up\u201d in the 1200m Whanganui race \u201cas she will be up on the speed, but I\u2019d prefer to have another trial or jumpout under her belt\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that is typical of plenty of us trainers at this time of the year. You want everything perfect, the right preparation and the ideal track conditions but the reality is you don\u2019t get them very often.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo you have to pick somewhere to start them off and then, unless the track is just too heavy, run them and see where you are.\u201d<\/p>\n
That last statement sums up the start of the 3-year-old spring and could apply to many in tomorrow\u2019s field and plenty in stables around the country.<\/p>\n
At this stage of their campaigns, there are dozens of 3-year-olds who look legitimate Group 1 Guineas contenders if they improve enough, stay sound and handle the pressure.<\/p>\n
Of course, many don\u2019t. There are few tougher schools with less places to hide than the early season 3-year-old ranks.<\/p>\n
But at least Didham doesn\u2019t have to worry about the highest mountain of all in the Kiwi 3-year-old spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t see her as a 1000 Guineas horse so I doubt we will go down that path with her.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe will stick to sprinting for now and she was actually under offer last week but we will take this one race at a time.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe will be there for a long way on Saturday but I just hope the weather holds and it doesn\u2019t get too wet.\u201d<\/p>\n
That could be a deciding factor in this Guineas as rain on Friday or Saturday could dull the speed of the newcomers and suit a hardened winter performer like Platinum Diamond.<\/p>\n
But in reality, almost any of them could win without surprising as most have shown proper ability from limited opportunities.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the card, Didham suggests Herald readers who don\u2019t mind a responsible punt check out Shameless Star in Race 1.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe actually thought she\u2019d beat War Princess when they were both on debut but she is a nice horse who won her trial recently and will be a good chance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBut yes, it was a surprise to see her open favourite over some of those bigger-stable horses.\u201d War…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99100,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[48569,48566,37409,48568,14805,13673,41166,15872,8637,48570,48567,3004,19688,36838,4804,101,37763,25455,25459,17062,1850,26150,56,54,55,636,11555,3674],"class_list":["post-99099","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-decent","tag-didhams","tag-go","tag-guineas","tag-hands","tag-horse","tag-hot","tag-know","tag-makes","tag-nervous","tag-princess","tag-racing","tag-ready","tag-rivals","tag-set","tag-sports","tag-spring","tag-start","tag-their","tag-them","tag-to","tag-trainer","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-war","tag-when","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99099"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99099\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99099"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}