Soxagon a great local hope

THIS Saturday sees Toowoomba hosting the main Queensland race meeting of the week featuring the jewel in the crown of the Garden City’s racing calendar, the Weetwood Handicap.

Clifford Park racecourse comes alive with a terrific nine-race card headlined by the 1200m listed sprint race, where local horses and city raiders battle it out for supremacy at one of the toughest race tracks in the country.

There are plenty of Brisbane runners heading up the range again this year with the Desleigh Forstertrained Apache Chase leading the charge. He is clearly the best-backed runner in early TAB fixedprice markets after winning the Fred Best last preparation and resumes here on the back of a recent trial win.

Desert Lord from the David Vandyke yard is well in the market and did win the Goldmarket last start, so is in fine form.

The local trainers have a formidable record in years gone by and my pick in the race is the locallytrained Soxagon.

It was an excellent return to racing a fortnight ago carrying 60.5kg. Now the Mark Currie-trained gelding looks perfectly placed here second-up, carrying a kilo less from the good draw.

He’s only had the one race start at this track which was a dominant maiden win back in February 2019 and is the only member of the local brigade currently under double-figure odds. Premier trainer Tony Gollan grew up in the Garden City and has had enormous success in the biggest races around, but is yet to snare a Weetwood Handicap.

This year he saddles up four runners – Royal Hale, Tambo’s Mate, Macewen and Snitch.

The Weetwood Handicap has been a springtime event since 2020, now run in the last week of the Carnival of Flowers and really is Toowoomba’s time to shine.

This year is an open and intriguing edition of the Weetwood Handicap and is scheduled to be run at 5pm.

You can catch all of the race day analysis live from Clifford Park on Sky Thoroughbred Central as well as Sky Racing 1 and the Sky Racing Active App.