Xtravagant Star saved for Caulfield resumption, McEvoys to rely on English Riviera
Ten-length maiden-winning Deep Field filly to tackle red-hot Cap D’Antibes at Flemington
Xtravagant Star (Xtravagant) won’t be seen in Saturday’s Cap D’Antibes Stakes (Listed, 1100m) but trainers Tony and Calvin McEvoy won’t be without representation in the hotly contested Flemington race, the father-and-son duo lining up early pre-post favourite English Riviera (Deep Field).
The trainers are carefully plotting a course towards the Coolmore Stud Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) with last season’s dominant Inglis Millennium (RL, 1100m) winner Xtravagant Star – a race the stable won in 2018 with champion filly Sunlight (Zoustar) – resulting in the three-year-old’s spring campaign being delayed until Caulfield next week.
Xtravagant Star, one of 26 nominations for the Cap D’Antibes Stakes, will instead tackle a three-year-old race over 1000 metres on September 17 after winning three jump–outs this preparation, showing her customary blistering early speed on each occasion.
“She’s going extremely well and she had a gallop this morning on the course proper at Ballarat, but we just feel that kicking her off over 1000 metres is a more suitable option for her, the way she’s been training, hence waiting another week for that race at Caulfield,” Calvin McEvoy told ANZ Bloodstock News yesterday.
“She’s probably, to be honest, sharper this preparation. Her last preparation she had the three runs and she was still working it out, albeit winning the Millennium, but she certainly knows her job this prep.
“Her formlines are really good, but one thing I will say, we’ve learnt that she doesn’t like wet tracks, and I feel we’re going to be in for a bit of a wet spring, so we’re just going to have to be a little bit smart about where we place her, knowing she is better performed on better ground.”
Of a potential Coolmore Stud Stakes mission for Xtravangant Star, McEvoy said: “She needs to come back and prove she’s up to that level, but we definitely think she is and that’s the race we’d love to get her to, so that’s the plan.”
The Cap D’Antibes Stakes shapes as one of the form races of the early spring, particularly as the carnival heats up in Melbourne over the coming weeks, as the fillies of the generation have an edge, so far at least, over their male counterparts and the McEvoys are confident English Riviera, a ten-length maiden winner at Ballarat on August 5, can measure up.
English Riviera, a Blue Diamond Prelude (F) (Gr 2, 1100m) placegetter last February who wears the same Seymour Bloodstock colours of owner Darren Thomas as Xtravagant Star, could clash with the unbeaten fillies Bubble Palace (Rich Enuff), Hell Hound (Hellbent) and Get In The Spirit (Spirit Of Boom) as well as the talented Ghaanati (Deep Impact).
“She also galloped this morning and we can’t fault her, she’s had a run down the straight at Flemington, so she’s been there before,” the co-trainer reported.
“She’s really grown and developed into a beautiful filly and she won her maiden about a month ago in as good a style as you’ll see.
“The one thing is, she’s coming out of a Poly maiden, but … she ran in the Prelude and the Blue Diamond, so we already know she’s a really good galloper.”
An Alan Bell-bred filly, herself a daughter of New Zealand Listed winner Second Time Lucky (Any Suggestion), English Riviera was purchased by Mark Pilkington for $260,000 at the 2021 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale.
English Riviera won a 1000-metre jump out at Ballarat on August 23 to keep her up to the mark for her Cap D’Antibes test.
“She won that maiden in early August and it’s a long spring, so we were happy to space her runs a little bit, that was all, and she is in really good order,” McEvoy said.