Crunch Time for ‘Ambivalent’

My Ambivalent (Ire) (Authorized {Ire}) is facing an important 24 hours as she tries to recover from a minor setback in time for Saturday’s G1 Crown Golden Ale Caulfield Cup at Caulfield. The Roger Varian-trained mare, winner of the G2 Middleton S. at York back in May, is reported to have sustained a stone bruise to her off-fore foot which forced her to miss light work on Sunday and Monday. Winner of last year’s edition of the G1 Pretty Polly S., My Ambivalent is due to tackle Saturday’s Group 1 event in preparation for next month’s G1 Emirates Melbourne Cup and she impressed connections in a piece of work under intended rider Hugh Bowman at Werribee Saturday. However, Varian’s assistant David Eustace revealed the mare was found to be lame in her box Sunday morning. 

He told www.racing.com, “She worked Saturday morning and everyone was happy, Hugh was happy and she was sound that night. She was lame yesterday morning and she’d bruised her foot. She was sound on it this morning without a shoe on and we put the shoe on and she wasn’t quite right. She’s improved a lot from yesterday to today and as long as it’s only bruising, I’d be pretty confident we’d get her out [on the track] tomorrow.” 

Added Eustace, “If she can train tomorrow, we can still seriously think about running on Saturday, but if she missed another day of exercise then we’d have to draw stumps I think and aim her straight to the [G1] Melbourne Cup. If she was fine tomorrow, she’d have a canter then, a canter Wednesday and we’d think about giving her a little lung-opener on Thursday. Luckily she’s pretty fit and that bit of work put her spot on so I’m not really concerned about missing two days [work], but she definitely couldn’t miss three.”