Last month's G1 Oakleigh Plate winner Shamal Wind (Aus) (Dubawi {Ire}) will not be seen again during the Australian autumn and will instead prepare for a tilt at the G1 King's Stand S. at Royal Ascot in June, trainer Robert Smerdon told Sky Sports Radio. The 5-year-old, campaigned by Love Racing, was winning her first Group 1 in the Oakleigh Plate.
“The connections have decided they'd like to travel with her,” Smerdon said. “She was invited to run in the [G1] Al Quoz Sprint in Dubai, but that timing didn't seem ideal. The plan is that she'll go to England run in the King's Stand, and then on the other side of that stay there and probably be covered by a Northern Hemisphere stallion to Southern Hemisphere time. She's going to stud this year regardless.”
Smerdon added, “She won't run again [before the King's Stand] because her best form has always been at 1000 [meters] and fresh, so we'll just keep ticking her along and have her ready when the time comes.”
Shamal Wind will be Smerdon's first Royal Ascot contender.
“It's a great opportunity for her–no one's under any illusions as to the enormity of the task, but they want to give her the opportunity so that looks like being the plan from here,” he said. “It's a very difficult thing for a horse–everything has to go right. The horse has to travel that far, and we've seen it in the past–horses get there and the effect of the travel impacts them. So a lot has to fall into place–we're quite aware of the task at hand.”
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