Bumper Lowland Stakes meeting predicted

Masterton Racing Club officials are predicting a bumper Lowland Stakes meeting at Trentham on Saturday.
Spokesman Ray Southey said yesterday that excellent nominations had been received, both in terms of quality and quantity.
And they had come from stables all over the country, including those of such noted trainers as Graeme Rogerson and Steven Autridge, Mark Walker, Graeme Sanders and Debbie Sweeney, all from the Waikato, John Wheeler from Taranaki and Kevin Hughes from Canterbury.
"We did think clashing with the Derby meeting in Auckland might be a problem fields-wise but the nominations certainly suggest that won't be the case," Southey said. "Everything points to there being some high class racing right through the programme."
Southey said the Masterton club were making every endeavour to ensure that large numbers of Wairarapa people would be on course at Trentham.
Through generous sponsorship from Trust House a free train would be running from Masterton to Trentham and return and he was confident the nine carriages would be filled.
"We might be racing at Trentham but we still see ourselves as being Masterton-based and so we want to do everything we can to encourage Wairarapa patronage at our meetings," he said.
The $70,000 Lowland Stakes for three-year-old fillies will be the feature event on the day's card and Southey was delighted with the 18 nominations received for it.
"Many of the country's top fillies will be there?it should provide a great spectacle," he said.
One of the favourites for the race is certain to be Princess Coup, trained by Mark Walker and ridden by experienced Canterbury hoop Chris Johnson.
Johnson was actually suspended on a careless riding charge at the Timaru meeting on Sunday but has appealed the charge and has been granted a stay of proceedings until the appeal hearing in Wellington next Monday.
Princess Coup has raced consistently in top three-year- old company all season and her racing style of drifting off the pace early and mounting a storming finishing burst should be well suited to the roomy Trentham track, and the 2100m distance of the Lowland Stakes.
Another big effort from her there and she will become a prime fancy for the New Zealand Oaks.
Having a rider of Johnson's high profile at their meeting is a big boost for the Masterton club as it was thought jockeys might be in short supply because of Ellerslie racing on the same day.
However, that likelihood has lessened with the news that a group of northern jockeys including David Walsh, Buddy Lammas, Patrick Holmes, Regan Norvell and Trot Harris are, in fact, expected to ride at Trentham rather than at Ellerslie.
Also riding at Trentham will be successful Canterbury hoop Jamie Bullard, who has been engaged to ride the Cambridge filly Black Mmamba in the Lowland.
Other notable engagements for that race are Troy Harris for Soelin and Buddy Lammas for the Riccarton filly Baci, whose last three starts have produced two wins and a third in the Dunedin Guineas.