Midway Banquet for Trainer Doyle

Trainer Nathan Doyle believes his 4YO gelding Royal Banquet (Snitzel-Twilight Royale, by Testa Rossa) will be improved by having the blinkers on for his run in Saturday's Midway Handicap over 1300m at Randwick, reports racingnsw.com.au. "I can't fault him, he's off a long break so he's probably taken those two runs to come to hand," Doyle said about the horse who will have the 3kg claiming services of Tyler Schiller. "He just blossomed in the coat since his last run which suggests he had that improvement into his third run. With Tyler's claim I think he gets in great at the weights, dropping from a 78 to a 72 and taking the high profile trainers of out of the way." Royal Banquet ran third at his only start as a 2YO, then won four in succession as a spring 3YO, before being injured and having a long layoff. His record is now four wins from eight starts, having run seventh and fifth at his last two starts. "He's always shown us he needed blinkers and we were waiting for the right time to throw them on," he said. "I think Saturday is that time to bring them out and hopefully we can see the best of him. I don't like to put them on until you need them. You like to have that couple of lengths up your sleeve for when you get up to that better class of race. If he didn't have that niggling injury he could have been a nice horse but there's no issues with him now, he's free and sound. If we see a bit of rain about they'll know he's there." Royal Banquet was a $130,000 yearling at the Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale from the Kia Ora Stud draft, and his dam is a Group 2 winner, whose first two foals are city winners.