A field stacked with up-and-coming talent will head to Trentham this Saturday to line up in the seventh leg of the 2020-21 New Zealand Bloodstock Filly of the Year Series – the $70,000 Group Three New Zealand Bloodstock Desert Gold Stakes (1600m).
After the first six legs of the Series, the Group One New Zealand 1000 Guineas (1600m) winner Kahma Lass (NZ) (Darci Brahma) tops the table with 15 points.
Group Two winners Amarelinha (NZ) (Savabeel) and Needle and Thread (Makfi) share second spot with 8 points, followed by the 1000 Guineas runner-up Miss Tycoon Rose (Written Tycoon) on 7 and the Group Three winners Miss Aotearoa (NZ) (Per Incanto), De La Terre (NZ) (Reliable Man) and Whimsical (NZ) (Savabeel) on 6 each.
None of those fillies are in the line-up for Saturday’s Desert Gold Stakes, but plenty of emerging talent will battle it out at Trentham to try to make their own moves up the table in the second half of the Filly of the Year Series.
Four of the runners in the Desert Gold Stakes already have Filly of the Year Series points to their name. Fleetwood Maca (NZ) (Rock ‘n’ Pop) is currently in eighth place with 4 points, having finished second behind Amarelinha in the Group Two Eight Carat Classic (1600m) on Boxing Day.
Love For All (Love Conquers All) and Sweet Anna (NZ) (Tavistock) each finished second at Group Three level earlier in the Series, earning 3 points apiece, while Signora Nera (NZ) (Sweynesse) picked up 1.5 points from a third placing at Group Three level.
The lightly raced Key (Exceed and Excel) is another runner in Saturday’s field who has already earned black type, having finished second against male three-year-olds in the Group Three Wellington Stakes (1600m) at Otaki in November. Six other runners in this talented line-up have already won races.
The New Zealand Bloodstock Desert Gold Stakes will be run as Race 6 at Trentham on Saturday, with a start time of 3:05pm.
