Racing: Improving Tui Song ready to turn form around

There has not been a bigger certainty beaten in the north all season than Tui Song at Ellerslie last start.

Her effort to get within a neck of the winner Ever Ready after being blocked for a run seemingly 43 times, was spectacular.

It's why graveyards are full of punters, but the classy improving mare looks the goods in Race 2 at Te Rapa today, even from an awkwardly wide barrier. The No 13 stall should reduce back to No 10 with scratchings and Tui Song needs only an even break to turn her form around.

Kindacross (No1, R3) will be everyone's choice in the juvenile after his stylish two-from-two formline. But he's going to be at unbackable odds and a better option might be playing around with a few multiple bets with Boudi Woudi (No7). Punters got badly burned when she went out a raging favourite on debut at Otaki last month and missed the start badly. She came from being tailed off to finishing second, albeit a distant one, to tearaway winner Mi Jubilee. They broke the track record in that race.

Whether or not you agree that Pin High (No16, R4) should have been relegated from first at Ellerslie last start, you can't argue that the Takanini filly deserves serious consideration again in a special condition maiden field. The danger could be Pasadena Kid (No5) in what will be a very competitive race.

There are five mares in the $40,000 Gasmate Stakes with little or nothing between them. You can make a case for each of them, from the top, Penny Gem (No1, R5), St Jessie (No2), Belle Femme (No3), Bridie Belle (No9) and Calveen (No10). It would be easy to say box them in quinellas and trifectas, but to narrow it down slightly, Penny Gem and Bridie Belle were both denied their luck when unplaced behind Calveen at Ellerslie last start.

Penny Gem is improved and will be greatly assisted by the 200m step up to 1600m this time and Bridie Belle is in pretty much the same category.

Don't dismiss Belle Femme. She may have troubled St Jessie at Ellerslie had the inside gap Matthew Williamson had been looking for materialised. She had to be switched across the heels of runners and ran home down the outside into fourth.

If Etoile Du Nord (No8, R6) is coming back to form this campaign, it has to be today.

No excuses this time, she has 2400m to work it out and even a long run to the first bend to sort out her awkwardly wide barrier.

The Waikato Cup - Race7 - is a cracking line-up. Southerner Justine Coup (No9) gets the nod. She showed with her too-short 1600m win in the Churchill Stakes at Riccarton that she is in for a big summer and this could be the first step. St Reims (No1), as usual, will set them up a merry pace and the likes of Waitoki Dream, Cluden Creek and Garrard will be running on strongly. Forget Waitoki Dream's failure to get into the money last time. He'll be better here.

If Cog Hill (No2, R11) starts in the last he will take plenty of beating. Mohican Brave (No4) is smart.