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By Ray Hickson

You only have to look at the weight Jason Collett is willing to ride Enriched at in Saturday’s Group 3 $250,000 CMNL Up & Coming Stakes (1300m) at Rosehill for an insight on his opinion of the three-year-old.

Jockey Jason Collett (Pic: Bradley Photos).

While Collett can ride a bit lighter than the 53kg he will get down to in order to ride the Michael Freedman-trained galloper he’s not doing it just for the sake of a ride.

Enriched, whose dam is a half-sister to Winx, impressed the jockey with his first-up win at Warwick Farm and he was keen to stick with the colt.

“I liked him and I thought enough of him to get down to this weight to ride him. I think he’s stakes quality,’’ he said.

“It’s lighter than the usual, I can do a touch lighter than this but I’d need more prep for that and probably a bigger carrot to dangle.”

Collett said he should be able to take advantage of barrier one and put Enriched, $14 with TAB on Friday, on the back of the speed as he did in his first-up win since tackling the Pierro Plate on debut.

The margin in that maiden win was only narrow but significant interference around the 200m mark was a contributing factor and he feels the step up to 1300m will only be a plus.

“He copped some interference early on in the straight and lost a lot of momentum. It was a better win than it looked,’’ Collett said.

“We’ve got barrier speed so I’d like to think we’ll be holding a pretty prominent spot from that gate.

“He wasn’t at his best at his first start against Switzerland, they had that much of an opinion to put him in that race, and he was in the market that day.”

Obviously boom filly Autumn Glow looms large over the Up & Coming but Collett said the $1.8 million youngster still has some work to do.

“She does have a stickier gate to deal with, we are talking Rosehill rail out a touch on a good deck so it will make her job a touch more difficult,’’ he said.

“If you take her out I think I’m a pretty good winning chance.”

Collett rides Piastri for Ciaron Maher in the Mounties Group Handicap (1200m) and he won’t have the advantage of an inside barrier as he did when scoring at Rosehill two weeks ago.

He was able to track the speed from behind the leader and took an inside run as he kicked away to win over 1100m.

“The gate’s not great. The gate helped me win last start, it afforded me a nice run,’’ Collett said.

“He gets the firmer track plus the wider gate so there’s a few negatives there but the horse is going very well.”

Maher said on SEN that he feels Piastri is a progressive horse and is capable of overcoming the barrier.

Enriched wins at Warwick Farm on August 21

Meanwhile, Maher rates Axius as a big chance of upsetting Autumn Glow in the Up & Coming.

The Justify colt led all the way to beat Harrys Bar, a winner midweek, at Canterbury on August 7.

“I think he’s got a super chance. I’m very happy with this colt and he’s one of the better chances of the day,” he said.

All the fields, form and replays for Saturday’s Rosehill meeting