Star South Australian Instant Celebrity is being geared towards Sydney riches in the spring.
After a dominant Adelaide Racing Carnival winning the Group 1 Sangster and placing in The Goodwood, the Phillip Stokes filly has her eye on the $7.5m Golden Eagle and The Invitation, a newly announced $2m race.
The Invitation (1400m), a 12-horse field selected by a Racing NSW panel, will run at Royal Randwick on October 23 before the $7.5m Golden Eagle (1400m) is run at Rosehill seven days later.
Stokes said a Sydney campaign was impossible to ignore and was looking forward to seeing her ramp up her campaign in the coming weeks before she resumes in the Group 3 Cockram Stakes over 1200m at Caulfield on August 28.
“She’ll having a jump out in a week’s time, then a trial and start first-up in the Cockram,’’ Stokes said on RSN.
Stokes won Saturday’s Group 3 Bletchingly Stakes at Caulfield with Sansom which has given the stable plenty of confidence after adding a new track to their training facilities which saw Sansom upstage his rivals first-up from a break.
“She’s had the same preparation of Sansom on our training track here,’’ Stokes said.
“She never really went out of work, we just kept her ticking over,’’ he said.
Stokes said Sanom’s win was a strong endorsement for the new track and their ability to have horses fitter for first-up assignments. This bodes well for Instant Celebrity when she returns to racing.
“He’d only had the one jump out,’’ Stokes said of Sansom who has now won nine of 21 starts.
“We’d changed it around, we put in a new training track at our farm, it’s 1100m with one steep incline and a gentle one.
“I didn’t really know where he was at but he was obviously more forward than we thought,’’ he said.
Sansom will head towards the P B Lawrence Stakes over 1400m at August 14.
With a week off racing in Victoria, Stokes was hoping to return home to Adelaide as the stable battled out for the Adelaide Trainer’s Premiership where they trail Michael Hickmott by four and sit just two wins behind Tony and Calvin McEvoy.
