American trainer Wesley Ward is no stranger to British racecourses, having enjoyed success in recent years with the likes of No Nay Never (Scat Daddy), Hootenanny (Quality Road), Acapulco (Scat Daddy) and Undrafted (Purim) at Royal Ascot and beyond, and Ward will make an early raid on the country this year after confirming the unraced 2-year-old filly Create A Dream (Oasis Dream {GB}) for next Saturday's Betway Brocklesby Conditions Stakes at Doncaster.
Ward is expected to send five juveniles across the Atlantic on the weekend.
“The problem we have here is we don't have a lot of opportunities to run the 2-year-olds with grass pedigrees in the early part of the year, because they've taken the Polytrack surface away at Keeneland,” Ward explained. “The Polytrack used to be a good leveler for the turf horses running against the dirt horses, but now we don't have that, it's pretty tough.”
Create A Dream is a daughter of French stakes winner and U.S. Grade I-placed Anabaa's Creation (Ire) (Anabaa), and Ward said, “With a filly of this quality, we didn't want to run her against the speed-orientated horses on the dirt. She came to the top on the grass at Palm Meadows in Florida, so we decided we'd bring her over to England along with a few others. They'll head out Sunday and will be based at Manton with my assistant, Blake Heap. Sam Sangster was good enough to let us stay and we're grateful to Paul Shanahan for organising it for us. The plan is for the horses to stay at Manton and we'll see if they are worthy of making it to Royal Ascot. We're really excited about it and we're expecting big things from Create A Dream, bigger things than the Brocklesby, even though it is a historical race.”
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