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Lightly raced gelding Snap Book – one of five last start winners – will need to step up again to be any chance of qualifying for the Newhaven Park Country Championships when he races at Wagga on Thursday.
Snap Book ($9 on TAB) has only raced three times winning his past two and joins Bianco Vilano ($2.20 favourite), The Herald ($7.50), Vella Fox ($4.80) and Burrandana ($4.60) as last time out winners in the Class 2 (1400m).
Snap Book's trainer Donna Scott took out the 2019 SDRA qualifier at Albury with Bennelong Dancer before the mare finished third in the final.
Scott also has La Sante, Clever Art, Our Last Cash and Gusonic building towards the qualifier.
Bianco Vilano blitzed his rivals last start at Albury and faces a much stiffer test with top weight of 61kg, The Herald is resuming from a break, Vella Fox has raced four times for two wins and as many seconds and Burrandana has produced strong finishes to win his past two races.
Add to that recent winners Exalted Dennis ($26), Gold Tracker ($23) and Bubbler ($19) and it's a more than average restricted class race, according to Scott.
"My horse needs to knock over Thursday's race to be some sort of a chance in the qualifier," she said.
"This is his first preparation, I have spaced his races, and it has been a while since his last start.
"The Class 2 races here are normally pretty good, but this is a bit better than your normal race."
Albury jockey Simon Miller will have the ride aboard Snap Book who won at big odds at Canberra before again winning at Albury.
Top jockey Jeff Penza has picked up the ride on Burrandana with Billy Owen suspended, while Danny Beasley will guide The Herald for the first time.
The Herald has only raced three times for trainer Mitch Beer and won his latest by more than six lengths in November.
Scott said Snap Book had ten days off after his last start and was ready to go again: "This is his first race preparation and he has always shown us something although he is a bit quirky," she said.
"Because the Country Championships are coming up you try and find the right horses to take to it and hopefully qualify for Sydney."
There seems to be little separating her contenders in ability for the Country Championships qualifier with horses like Snap Book still emerging. Scott will also have Incentive ($4.40) lining up in the Wagga Scamper (1000m).
Incentive has won two of his past four starts and contests a highly competitive feature race where five of the runners are resuming.
The highly consistent Big Day Out ($7.50) has drawn the inside gate and is poised to strike first-up, while My Bold Boy ($10) has high speed and steps up in grade.
Incentive and La Sante, a last start winner at Wagga, are half brothers with eight wins between them.
"We have been doing some work with Incentive to get him to settle because he wants to over race. The plan is to take a sit and see if he can hit the ling strongly," Scott added.
