The Trinidad Der­by will hold cen­tre stage on Mon­day—Re­pub­lic Day. The fi­nal leg of lo­cal rac­ing’s ‘Triple Crown’ the Trinidad Der­by which will run off with on­ly one horse ca­pa­ble of win­ning, and that is, none oth­er than the un­beat­en John O’Brien-trained fil­ly—In The Head­lines.

Six hors­es have tak­en en­try for the Grade One event, a 2,000-me­tre race head­ed by In The Head­line’s sta­ble­mates Hel­lo World and Blind­ing Light. Train­er Glenn Mendez has his duo of The­o­ry of Colours and Lit­tle La­dy with the Lester Alex­is-trained Harts Gap be­ing the fi­nal run­ner.

The ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed race be­tween In The Head­lines and Hel­lo World is a mouth-wa­ter­ing clash but the fil­ly is un­der the cloud and may not race when the starter calls the event at San­ta Rosa Park, Ari­ma late this af­ter­noon.

In the Der­by, it is very dif­fi­cult to look be­yond Hel­lo World even if the dual Triple Crown win­ner In The Head­lines par­tic­i­pates. How he won on In­de­pen­dence Day when out-run­ning Davin­dra, Leonar­do An­gel in a five-race con­test was enough to show how much he has im­proved.

The eleven lengths suc­cess was in­deed su­perb. I don’t think any­thing will get close to him to­day. I will ex­pect a big run from the Mendez-trained The­o­ry of Colours, as she con­tin­ues to im­prove un­der the hand of the leg­endary train­er.

The ju­ve­niles will make their first start in pub­lic when they race in the open­ing event over 800 me­tres to com­mence the day’s pro­gramme.

O’Brien will sad­dle three in the event with So­ca Syn­er­gy, Head­lines Again and Creme De La Creme. Their main chal­lenge will come from Bee Alert from the Mendez sta­ble.

From my per­spec­tive, it looks like No­bel Abrego will be­gin the day with a win­ner aboard Head­lines Again. Sta­ble­mates So­ca Syn­er­gy could be sec­ond ahead of Mendez’s Bee Alert.

Be­low is the Card for to­day—Day 11 of the ARC rac­ing sea­son. The post time for the first event is 1.30 pm.