Thursday, 21 September 2017: Just like Rafaello, Spanish Bay is resuming in Friday’s $125,000 Kranji Stakes A race over 1200m, and coincidentally after being sidelined by the same ailment - bone chips.

Spanish Bay winning the SAAS FEE STAKES

While Ricardo Le Grange’s Rafaello, who is back after a six-month layoff, had chips taken out from his near fore fetlock, Spanish Bay was even worse off as he had the dreaded “floating fragments” removed, also via surgery, from both fetlocks.

Naturally, Spanish Bay  was on the outer for a longer period of time – 10 months. James Peters’ Group 3 winner (Saas Fee Stakes over 1400m with Nooresh Juglall astride in 2016) has not been sighted since his unplaced run in the Group 2 EW Barker Trophy (1400m) in November.

The young English trainer has earmarked the Racing Guide Classic (1400m) on October 8 as the Bernard Lee-owned gelding’s short-term goal should he pull up without any hiccups after Friday’s test.

“He had fetlock chips removed from both legs. He’s all good now, but we still have to go easy on him,” said Peters of his second ‘black type’ winner after Titanium (A’Isisuhairi Kasim) won the Group 2 Stewards’ Cup early in his fledgling training career last year.

“It was when he went for a break after the EW Barker Trophy that he started to have lameness issues shortly after he came back into work.

“I gave him a couple of trials and he ran okay. He’s drawn wide (10) and will probably need the run, and his next run will be in the Racing Guide Classic in a couple of weeks’ time.”

Peters has booked former two-time Singapore champion apprentice jockey Shafiq Rizuan for the comeback run of the former Group 2 Singapore Three-Year-Old Classic (1400m) winner (2015 when then prepared by Michael Freedman and ridden by Saifudin Ismail).

“Shafiq will ride him as he knows him well. He rode him at his two trials and was pretty happy with his condition,” said Peters.

“It’s a competitive field but my horse is in good form and if he gets luck in the running, he may run a place, but whatever he does, he will improve on that.”

The Nadeem six-year-old has always been one of Peters’ and his former boss Freedman’s stalwarts, and also the last to carry the famous navy blue and yellow stars silks of Lee’s Horizon Stable (famous for the likes of Always Certain, Lago Bay, Holy Empire, etc) until a recent acquisition in partnership with M Crawford has surfaced, bearing the same name as another former good horse of Lee’s, 2002 Juvenile Championship winner Grand Canyon.

This new Grand Canyon is an Ad Valorem four-year-old who raced once as Duty Free for trainer David Jolly in Adelaide, running fifth in a 1,250m race at Morphettville in March.