The Queen of Queanbeyan's Final Countdown

It is officially Slipper Week.

I skipped across town this morning, again relentlessly getting my children dressed, fed and ready for school much earlier than usual.  There were pony photographs at stake!  So having done a mafia style drop off to my friend Charo's house, who will take them to school for me (humm, did I actually say goodbye???) I bolted across town heading for Neville Layt's stables and my filly, Karuta Queen, or Lilly as she's known about the stables.  

Arriving just before the scheduled time of 8am (hurrah, on time, feel small sense of achievement, however I can usually be on time when there is a pony involved), Karuta Queen was still in her box.  A very lovely journalist, James Buckley, from the Canberra Times was there, along with a photographer from the paper.  James had arranged the reproduction in the Canbera Times of the image I took of the filly after being hosed  in the week before the Black Opal, and he's a nice chap.

Karuta Queen, or "Lilly" with trainer Neville Layt
 

Lilly was impatient to get going, so Neville asked that she be saddled up, and we all headed down the track to watch her work.  
Karuta Queen sizzles on the track.  Given the course proper to gallop on, she breezed home in 32.7 for the last 600m and 21.9 for the last 400m.  That's really good work.
 
 

 
 
 
 
After she worked, we all returned to the stables, which was when I heard the times she ran.  They are apparently very good.  She was out to run 'as hard as she can go', and apparently ran the last 600m in 32.7 and the last 400m in 21.9 and that's apparently v quick.  I read in a news article yesterday that the filly's white blood cell count was elevated immediately after the Black Opal.  Perhaps that explains her below par performance?  Freelance has had a couple of viruses, where bloods have shown the white cell count to be high, and omigod, what an absolute misery she was, so surely that could well account for the defeat in the Black Opal.

A groom, scrub and a polish was next on the menu.  She's ticklish, and pulls faces when being brushed, but there is no malice in it, although it's clear she likes things done her way. 


"I said gentle with that brush!"
 


 
 
The great mare Sunline used to do this.  A good omen for Saturday?  I like to think so.
 
 
Grouchy

 
 

I watched the barrier draw that was televised on Sky Racing.  Groan - she's drawn barrier 13!!!!  Her odds are currently $17.00 and apparently no horse has ever won the Slipper from that barrier.  Not so good.  Still, the filly doesn't know that, and there's usually a little bit of attrition in the week leading up to the Slipper, and you never know, if a runner inside of her is withdrawn, then all of a sudden she's not in that barrier anymore, is she!

See you on Saturday filly!

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