We head north to the upper NSW Hunter region on Tuesday, with a strong 7-race card set to play out a Scone racecourse.
The track is currently rated a Soft 5, with the rail situated in the true position.
With fine weather forecast, punters should expect a drying surface and fair racing across the day.
Scone Race 2 Tip #1 The Bald Eagle $7.10
This looks a nice race for a country BM66.
The Waterhouse/Bott stable will send round the short price favourite in Vivid Art, who will go forward in attempt to make every post a winner.
This girl by Artie Schiller drops 1kg and gains the services of Keagan Latham, so I suspect there will be continued support for her in betting.
I'm very keen to oppose the favourite and chime into the former City galloper, The Bald Eagle. This galloper is an ever reliable 1500-1600m specialist.
For mine, the Hawkes stable went away from a winning recipe when trying to get him running over longer distances..
The gelding has since found his way to the Kody Nestor yard, where he's produced two solid runs at 1300m and 1400m.
He finally gets out to the 1600m, drops significantly in grade and has drawn ideally in barrier 1. It's worth noting he's produced big runs from the inside draw, most notably his win over the Canterbury 1550m in BM70 grade.
Dylan Stanley claims 4kg which brings his weight down to 58.5kg. Stanley has one job; find the leader's back from the gates and if he can do that, he'll give himself every possible chance to run down Vivid Art late.
Scone Race 5 Tip #1 Battenburg $2.70
I was hard against this galloper at his opening quote first-up. The bookies didn't take any chances, opening him up $1.70 favourite off a lengthy spell.
He was a notable drifter late, but did get the job done, albeit the margin of victory was only 0.52 length.
He now steps out to an ideal trip, granted the 400m step up is usually a negative, but not for this guy, he'll relish it and will no doubt strip much fitter for the run.
He ran 3rd in the Group 1 Champion Stakes over 2000m, so we know he's a class act.
Now that he's got his maiden knocked over, I expect him to go on with it.
From barrier 9, Keagan Latham will mark him urgent and push forward to take up a prominent position in the run.
He's the class horse in this race, running against some below average types.
The big field of 14 ensures we get some sort of price, but they're all running for the minor prizes. Should destroy them!