Royal Ascot heroine Asfoora set for Australian return ahead of overseas campaign

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Royal Ascot heroine Asfoora (Flying Artie) is poised for her highly anticipated return to the track in Saturday’s Irwin Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m) at Morphettville.

The six-year-old mare has not raced in Australia for over 12 months since a fourth placing in The Galaxy (Gr 1, 1100m) in March last year, and trainer Henry Dwyer is hoping a successful South Australian sprinting assault will set her up for another fruitful European expedition. 

Dwyer had originally planned to resume the daughter of Flying Artie (Artie Schiller), who is a homebred for Akram El-Fahkri’s Noor Elaine Farm, in the Black Caviar Lightning Stakes (Gr 1, 1000m) at Flemington on February 15, but said the mare had taken longer than expected to be ready for her return.

“We’re pretty happy [with her]. We brought her back in to work a bit earlier in the year for the Lightning Stakes and she just didn’t quite come up and hadn’t quite re-acclimatised, but we’ve given her another break and she’s come back this time and she’s just terrific,” the Ballarat-based trained told ANZ Bloodstock News. 

“She looks every bit as good as she did when she was racing well overseas in the middle of their summer, so she’s well and truly acclimatised back and seems to be going well so it’s a good kick off point for her.”

Well weighted with 56.5 kilograms under weight-for-age conditions, given she has by far the highest rating in the race, Dwyer expects the mare to run well with regular rider Mitch Aitken back on board, but admits she’s got bigger targets ahead and isn’t necessarily there to win on Saturday.

“She had a very easy [exhibition] gallop at Ballarat, and then went to the trials at Ararat there and had a nice little spin around over 800 [metres]. We haven’t done too much with her,” Dwyer said.

“Obviously first–up for seven months, there’s a bit of a fitness query there, which is about where you want them when you’ve got a long preparation ahead of you.
But I think she will run well regardless, she tends to go pretty well first–up, and she’ll just keep improving through the preparation, which should be good.”

Following Saturday, Asfoora will head to the Robert Sangster Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) to test her merit over the six furlongs, before making her way back to the northern hemisphere.

“She’s over in Adelaide now at David Jolly’s and she’ll stay here through to the Sangster in two weeks and then all being well, she’ll hop on a plane over to Europe the week after that,” said Dwyer.

“Not sure what the dynamics over there are, we were talking about training her at Chantilly potentially, or back to Newmarket, depending on flights and transport and the rest of it. 

“But look, it’s a pretty well–worn path over there now. She settled in great at Newmarket last time and she knows the lay of the land so we’ve got a lot less to worry about this time than we did this time last year.” 

Asfoora finished second in the Rubition Stakes (Gr 2, 1100m) at Caulfield first-up last preparation, before missing the start and failing to fire when tenth at her next run in the Oakleigh Plate (Gr 1, 1100m). She then had her last Australian start in The Galaxy at Rosehill where she was beaten less than a length for fourth, before jetting off to Newmarket. 

That preparation, Dwyer admits, was not solely focused on preparing Asfoora for the trip, but this year the team have more finely tuned the preparation in the hope of going above and beyond what they achieved last year.

An excellent four-run northern hemisphere preparation for Asfoora began with a fourth-placed run in the Temple Stakes (Gr 2, 5f) at Haydock, a run that preceded the six-year-old’s fairytale success in the King Charles III Stakes (Gr 1, 5f) at Royal Ascot.

A pair of runs following her Ascot triumph saw Asfoora run a desperately close second in the King George Stakes (Gr 2, 5f) at York, before another fourth in the Nunthorpe Stakes (Gr 1, 5f) at the same track three weeks later, where Dwyer admitted the mare was probably slightly over the top.

“Last year she was up and going a lot earlier and that probably took a bit of sting out of the tail of her preparation,” the trainer said. 

“We were keen to get her to France for the [Prix de l’Abbaye at Longchamp] and maybe America [for the Breeders’ Cup], but she just probably trained off by that stage, whereas this year we are probably two months behind where we were at the same stage, so that might be a chance to get her deeper into a preparation over in Europe and potentially America.

“So that’s the plan with it all. She seems to be going as well, she’d had those three runs last year where we were trying to convince ourselves she was going well enough to take overseas. 

“The Rubiton, the Oakleigh Plate and then The Galaxy and she never won any of them, but she had things go against her. She missed her start a couple of times and then drew the outside barrier in The Galaxy and traveled wide the whole way. So look, it wasn’t an ideal preparation to go overseas off, but we had faith that she was going well and she proved that and hopefully she’s going equally as well now.” 

As for once she arrives, Dywer said he is not exactly sure where her preparation will take her. The mare is certain to run at Royal Ascot, but as for her lead-up runs, they are yet to be decided.

“She’ll run at Royal Ascot, that’s obviously locked in stone, it’s just a matter of where she has a lead-up run and if she has a lead-up run, and that’ll depend on how she goes in the Sangster and how she comes out of it,” Dwyer said.

“There’s a lead-up option at Haydock Park, which is where she ran last year, but it can get quite wet as it did last year and there’s a lead up run in France and if were training her at Chantilly, then we’d probably run in France, if we end up at Newmarket, we probably run at Haydock.”

On whether Asfoora can double-up in Royal Ascot glory, Dwyer is quietly confident the well-travelled mare can measure up once again on UK soil.

“I’d say so, it’s going to be a similar opposition to last year,” he said. “I think a couple of the main adversaries last year have been retired in Bradsell and Big Evs who have gone to stud. 

“Believing won the Al Quoz Sprint the other night, so she’ll probably front up at Royal Ascot again, we probably had her measure a couple of times and she had our measure a couple times, so it’ll be interesting.

“[Asfoora] obviously races as well and copes well with the preparation and the travel, so there’s no reason she won’t do that again.”