Alabama Lass faces stamina test in New Zealand 1000 Guineas showdown

Alabama Lass is considered the fastest in a strong field for today's New Zealand 1000 Guineas in Christchurch.

The story of today’s New Zealand 1000 Guineas could be one of three chapters.

And while jockey Sam Spratt thinks she knows how the first chapter reads, she thinks the second will determine the third for star filly Alabama Lass.

Alabama Lass is the X-factor girl of this $550,000 Guineas and nobody doubts she is the fastest in what is a strong and deep field.

The question on punters’ minds is whether Alabama Lass can be as potent at the end of 1600m as she has been at 1200m, and to a lesser degree 1400m in her last-start Soliloquy Stakes win at Ellerslie.

She looked set to bolt in that day but started to run out and shorten her stride in the last 150m, allowing race rivals today Kitty Flash and Love Poem to get close.

Add another high-class filly in Captured By Love to today’s Group 1 and any holes in Alabama Lass’ stamina could be expensively exposed.

Spratt, fresh from winning the 2000 Guineas on Savaglee last Saturday, said she thinks Alabama Lass will be all right over the extra 200m but she knows it won’t take much of a drop in performance to see her beaten.

“I think she has the speed to get across them early so that will help,” said Spratt of the race’s opening chapter.

“Then I have to try and get her into a rhythm. That doesn’t mean going slow, just at a speed where she is comfortable.

“If I can do that in the middle stages and she doesn’t get taken on then I think she will kick hard in the straight. So that middle section of the race will be crucial.”

Spratt said if her rivals do want to take Alabama Lass on she is happy to trail as the speedster is versatile but that brings luck into play later.

Any one of Captured By Love, Kitty Flash or Love Poem could storm at or even past Alabama Lass late and a further complicating fact could be the weather.

It was overcast but windy in Christchurch for most of yesterday but if the forecast rain came overnight it could make the 1600m even more testing, which would not suit Alabama Lass even though she should handle a wetter surface okay.

Spratt wouldn’t mind the rain coming just after the Guineas though, in time for the $400,000 New Zealand Cup in which she partners Canheroc.

He was a luckless third in the Wellington Cup on a wet track back in January and ranks as one of a host of chances in the historic Cup.

Spratt partnered Mehzebeen to win the lead-up race last Saturday after Craig Grylls couldn’t make the weight but Grylls gets back on her today and she looks the best each-way chance.

Beavertown Boy has to be a huge hope after storming home last Saturday for second to Mehzebeen while Wellington Cup winner Mary Louise would be another who would appreciate any easing of the Riccarton track.

Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.