Saturday 26 September is AFL Grand Final day, and that reshapes the racing map more than most people expect.
Sydney gets the weekend’s best card: Yulong Golden Rose Day at Rosehill Gardens, first race 11:55am, last at 5:25pm. Victoria gets no metropolitan meeting at all — Racing Victoria long ago confirmed that Grand Final day racing goes to Mornington.
The Golden Rose
A Group 1 over 1400 metres at Rosehill for three-year-olds at set weights, worth $1 million. It has been won by The Autumn Sun, Militarize and Broadsiding, and last year by Beiwacht — who has since returned at four to win the Memsie Stakes first-up and is now favourite for the Manikato.
The market as things stand: Guest House $2.80, St Gotthard $4.40, Warwoven $8. The final field and barriers sharpen that picture considerably, and until they are out the prices are quotes on an assumed field rather than the real thing.
Sunday is the Melbourne day
The $2 million Group 1 Manikato Stakes is run on Sunday 27 September at Caulfield — not at Moonee Valley, which is closed for redevelopment, and not on the Saturday.
Beiwacht is $4.50 favourite. But the race has just had its field limit cut from 16 to 13, after the Caulfield rail was moved out to the 13-metre position following the track safety problems there last weekend. Extragalatic, fourth in the market at $8, may not get a start.
What Saturday feeds
From here the spring goes hard. Turnbull Stakes Day at Flemington and Epsom Day at Randwick both fall on 3 October. Caulfield Guineas Day is 10 October.
Then the biggest Saturday of the Australian year: 17 October, with the 150th Caulfield Cup in Melbourne and The Everest plus the King Charles III Stakes at Randwick. The Cox Plate follows on 24 October at Flemington — the first time in the race’s history it has been run anywhere but the Valley.
