Marble Nine out to cause upset in Bletchingly Stakes

After a last start win at Caulfield by Marble Nine, a run in a late season weight-for-age race was briefly discussed.

But trainers Leon and Troy Corstens and racing manager Will Larkin, who at the start of the new season joins that pair in a training partnership, dismissed the thought and were instead going to concentrate on another three-year-old race at Caulfield on Saturday instead.

However, when extra nominations were called for the Group 3 Bletchingly Stakes (1200m), Troy Corstens and Larkin thought long and hard about revising their decision, much to the delight of Ed McKeon, principal owner and breeder of Marble Nine.

“Will and I had talked about, but we thought it might be a touch hard for him, and then when they extended the noms, Ed rang me and asked ‘what do you think?’,” Corstens said.

“I said we would put a nom in and have a look, then Will and I talked about it a bit more and we just thought there could be better pace in it which might suit him.

“He’s a bit of a question mark at the 1200 (metres) as he is quite a hard going horse and he can over-race a bit, so we just thought the pace of the Bletchingly might be more genuine than the 1200 for the three-year-olds, so that was why we made the decision to run.

“The owner bred the horse and has the mare, so if we can get some Black Type, it would be extremely beneficial.”

Corstens sees Recommendation as a major stumbling block on Saturday after his seven-length romp in the Group 3 Sir John Monash Stakes (1100m) at Caulfield on July 13.

Marble Nine was also successful over 1100m that day, running 0.33 seconds slower that Recommendation.

“Recommendation will go forward and hopefully we can get a nice spot behind it and go from there,” Corstens said.

“We ran 0.3 outside of Recommendation’s time last time, which if he ran that in that race, he would have run second, you would think if you just went on times, but he goes up in weight, which isn’t great.

“But if we can pick up Black Type it will be very beneficial for the mare, and the ownership group has the sister coming through as well that is a lovely filly which is about to turn three.

“She’s taken a bit of time, but she will be racing over the spring.”