KEY POINTS:
Buena Ventura has an advantage - he's one of the few horses in tomorrow's $25,000 Fruit World 1600 at Avondale not prepping for next week.
Most of the leading runners here are having a 1600m final hit-out for next Saturday's 2100m $80,000 Taumarunui Cup at Te Rapa.
And most are stayers. Buena Ventura, by contrast, has a good record at 1600m.
He missed racing in the Whyte Handicap at the abandoned Trentham meeting last Saturday.
Before that he failed at Te Awamutu, but the track that day was such that many horses expected to show up ran well below expectations on a day which, in retrospect, could provide misleading form for beaten runners.
His two runs before Te Awamutu suggested a win was not far away and he will get every opportunity tomorrow.
The conditions should be so testing that the stayers cannot be totally ruled out.
Stone Garden has pretensions to class. He failed completely to handle the conditions at Tauranga on June 21, but before that had scored two wins and a second.
Dead Rabbits, Kiri and All's Well are more than capable of shaking this field on their better days.
Montjee's form is sound enough in lower grades to suggest a successful step up to R90 in the Auckland 24 Hour Glass 2100m. He has attacked the line strongly recently and conditions tomorrow will favour horses who can run on.
