Chasing the breakthrough

Split Lip set for defining test at Sandown

SPLIT Lip is searching for her first Group victory when she tackles the 1500m trip for the first time in today’s Summoned Stakes at Sandown.

The four-year-old mare has a Listed win, a Group 3 second and four other stakes top-four finishes, but a win in today’s $150,000 undercard race will rubber stamp her CV ahead of a future broodmare career.

But it’s been a tough preparation for the Rosemont Stud mare, who finished second in the Listed Black Pearl on Geelong Cup Day, before finishing well back on a wet track at Flemington.

“We’re hoping for a change of luck,” stud principal Anthony Mithen said.

“She didn’t seem to handle the wet terribly well last start and her form suggests — and she hadn’t run on the wet for us, so we weren’t entirely sure but had our suspicion — she’s better on top of the ground.

“Barrier draws are still a little unkind to us, but hopefully she can possie up a bit closer to it and tough it out and show the form she showed at Geelong.”

It will be her first time at 1500m, but Mithen said the daughter of Your Song presented as a mile-type horse.

“The older she’s got, that 1400m-1600m should be up her alley,” he said.

“We’re testing her at that but the indications are she should be able to get the trip.

“We sort of set her for that Geelong race; that was a little bit our grand final, knowing then she could go to 1400m and then 1500m after that.

“But that was her sprinting grand final and then we thought we’d see what the carnival presents after that.

“She’s well and it doesn’t look like she’s necessarily come to the end of her preparation but we’ll learn more after Saturday.”

Luck Favours, who was pencilled in for a trip to Royal Ascot, won on debut at Seymour on Thursday for Rosemont Stud. A relieved Mithen said there’d be no rush to get her overseas, keen to race as a three-year-old in the warmer local conditions before planning the next stage.