KEY POINTS:
There is a theme with many judges that 3-year-old fillies are better than the males.
It's going to take a million dollars tomorrow to find out.
If you needed a test of male v female, you couldn't have got a better match-up than the fillies El Quello Veloce and Juice up against Fully Fledged, Kildonan, Moveovr and Tell A Tale.
Tomorrow's $1 million First Sovereign Trust NZ 2000 Guineas will define 3-year-old rankings up to 1600m.
You never want a dreary race when a million dollars is put up for competition and this fascinating contest justifies the stakemoney.
John Sargent rests a little easier with Il Quello Veloce in the knowledge the filly beat Fully Fledged in the group one Manawatu Sires Produce in the autumn.
Balancing that, Fully Fledged looked out of sorts on a track than was definitely rain-affected despite an official rating of good.
John Wheeler feels Juice is improved with her second to Daffodil in last week's 1000 Guineas.
Moveovr and Kildonan have rapidly improved to suddenly become major contenders.
If the girls v the boys makes this a tough equation, it is made tougher again by the barrier draw.
Fully Fledged and Kildonan have drawn the two outside gates No 13 and No 14 and Il Quello Veloce jumps from No 10 and another fancied runner Altered Image has gate No 11.
Arguably the best single 3-year-of performance so far this season was Fully Fledged's Sarten Memorial victory at Te Rapa on Labour Monday.
He was at the tail, looped the field and won as he liked.
Given that the beaten brigade included the favourite for this race, Kildonan, it was a smart performance.
Clearly, when beaten by Tell A Tale in the Hawkes Bay Guineas at his previous start, Fully Fledged was not quite at his best.
The difference, in terms of lengths, between those last two performances was considerable.
No one is saying what they'll be doing from their gates in the first 300m of this crucial race - and you can't expect anyone to declare their tactics - but at best it will be a wish list rather than a definite move, given the way the race is set up.
"I don't quite know how this will pan out," said Fully Fledged's senior co-trainer Murray Baker.
Local trainer Peter Williams believes Fully Fledged is the horse his runner, the unbeaten Moveovr, has to beat.
"He's been staying at home and the way he worked this morning I'd say he's the benchmark," said Williams yesterday.
A number of Southerners have already rated Moveovr equal to any of the country's 3-year-olds, but Williams believes that is premature.
"You never really know how good they are until they've raced at group one level. A number of the horses he's facing have raced at group one and he hasn't."
Williams is more prepared to rate Moveovr's potential rather than his chances this time.
"I think he'll go far. I've always said the Derby was the race for him, so whether he's a Guineas horse remains to be seen.
"He'll keep getting better," said Williams.
Cambridge trainer Yves Seguin almost smiled when Kildonan drew the outside gate of 14 - it wasn't what he wanted, but he'd been there before.
"He's been around three times and three times from an outside barrier," said Seguin. "Fourteen out of fourteen is not good, but we have no choice."
Seguin sees Fully Fledged as the horse to beat.
"He's drawn just inside us and we'll be keeping an eye on him.
"He worked very well for Andrew Calder on Tuesday morning."
Mark Walker' Tell A Tale continued his winning run when he was given a preliminary run on this course last month.
