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Beau Rossa ready to strike in Lightning

It's the final black-type feature of the 2020-21 Australian racing season, but Saturday’s $107,250 Listed Lightning Stakes (1200m) at Morphettville shapes as the launching pad to the spring for exciting three-year-old Beau Rossa.

A Group 2 winner in the Tobin Bronze (formerly Euclase) Stakes at Morphettville back in May, trainer Will Clarken in buoyed by the change in Adelaide weather on Thursday that will hopefully see an improving Morphettville track come Saturday.

Clarken said he would walk the track in the next 24 hours to determine if Beau Rossa will line-up knowing the horse has Melbourne Spring Carnival ambitions.

“It’s not so much a wet track, it’s a tired track that I am worried about,’’ Clarken said.

“We’re not going to risk his spring on a compromised check.

“At this stage I’d say yes, he will run, but we’ve had a couple of horses over the past couple of years that I’ve lost running on an average track,’’ he said.

Clarken said Beau Rossa was in good order for his return since running the Group 1 Goodwood, also on a track that didn’t really suit the rising four-year-old.

“I don’t think he lapped up the track on Goodwood day,’’ Clarken said.

“The track was starting to show some signs after a lot of racing that day, I don’t think he loved it.

“It’s footing underneath that worries me, I’ll have a good look today otherwise he will go to Flemington for the Aurie’s Star,’’ he said.

Clarken said he was happy to be guided by Beau Rossa through the spring. 

“The Group 1 races over seven furlongs are races we’ll aspire to run in, but we will play it one by one,’’ Clarken said.

He has also accepted in the Lightning Stakes with Naleigh and two-year-old filly Bleriot and said the former was capable of running a bold race despite being marked a $151 chance with bookmakers.

“Naleigh is bolters odds,’’ Clarken said.

“I’m sure she will run well, whether that’s running sixth or into the top four I’m not sure, but she is going as good as I can get her,’’ he said.

And he is likely to keep Great Diviner in Adelaide and avoid a clash with boom three-year-old I’m Thunderstruck at Moonee Valley.

“I think he’ll go to the Parks on Friday,’’ Clarken said.

“If he’d drawn a bit kinder in Melbourne, or the Mick Price horse had a chink in its armour we would have gone.

“But from all accounts it hasn’t missed a beat and it looks like a top-class horse on the way up,’’ he said.

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