Missile Stakes an important test for exciting Schwarz

The freshly minted training partnership of John O’Shea and Tom Charlton will saddle up its first stakes runner when burgeoning talent Schwarz resumes in the Group 2 Missile Stakes at Randwick.

While the milestone is significant, O’Shea hopes Schwarz can make it memorable.

“It will be more special if we win it,” O’Shea quipped.

Charlton worked for O’Shea for five years before he was elevated to co-captain last month and the training duo produced a winner with their first runner, Bartolf, at Scone on July 2.

Hawkesbury Guineas hero Schwarz looks to be one of the stable’s rising stars and O’Shea is hoping to see a glimpse of that promise in Saturday’s feature.

With barn mate Junquiera scratched in preference for a benchmark race, Schwarz will have nine rivals and O’Shea is banking on the four-year-old’s residual fitness from a winter run in Queensland to hold him in good stead at Randwick.

“I like horses coming out of that Queensland winter, they do have good residual fitness and they’re effective early in the spring,” O’Shea said.

“He’s in as good a form as we’ve had him, and we can’t fault him.

“This is a nice challenge for him Saturday and then there are some other challenges we have picked out for him later on in the season.

“He won’t have a busy spring, but he will have a nice campaign that builds his profile again.”

Having missed his juvenile season with injury, Schwarz spent much of his three-year-old year playing catch up in terms of his rating and experience.

He has still managed to bank two stakes wins and Saturday’s opening Group race of the Sydney season will be an opportunity to see how much further he can go this campaign.

Races in his hometown and Melbourne will be considered, including the Group 1 Memsie Stakes (1400m) at Caulfield on August 31 and the Tramway Stakes (1400m) at Randwick a week later.

“There are a few options, and it will all be performance based,” O’Shea said.

“If he were to win on Saturday, there is an option to run in the Memsie, but then there is an option to keep him here.

“If we wanted to keep him fresh and run in a Manikato (Stakes), he’s been around the Valley before.

“There are so many things we can do with him and that’s why we’re not rushing into any decisions, it will be based on performance and how we think he’s going.”

James Mcdonald will partner Schwarz in the Missile Stakes (1200m) and O’Shea expects the horse to have sufficient gate speed to overcome his outside draw.

He is a solid $2.20 favourite in early markets, which also have the resuming Arctic Glamour ($5.50), Semillion ($6) and Shezanalister ($7) at single-figure odds.