Sydney racing folk will have breathed a sigh of relief when they checked out this week’s forecast and saw the BoM’s tips for Tuesday to Saturday: “No rain.”

The same week last year yielded a biblical 215mm in the week to race day, including 45mm the night before.

With surface water visible on a heavy 10 track, the Randwick meeting was abandoned early on the Saturday. And while some of the support races were moved to midweek or subsequent dates, the feature $300,000 Group 2 Missile Stakes was scrapped.

That forced a rethink for the Missile’s major players. Its main attraction, top-class sprinter/miler Private Eye, headed south for the following week’s P.B. Lawrence Stakes at Caulfield and won it convincingly.

The previous year’s Missile was a bit light on for depth — none of the nine runners made it to the Everest. But the winner, Schwarz, franked the form by taking the Group 1 William Reid Stakes in his autumn campaign.

The Missile has long been a good horse’s race and Schwarz was the 12th of its 46 winners to have gone on and won a Group 1. Another six were already Group 1 winners before taking the Missile.

With Lady Shenandoah saved for another day, there is no established Group 1 winner in Saturday’s Missile field.

However, several of the contenders will have realistic Group 1 ambitions this campaign, notably Angel Capital, Napoleonic and Fully Lit, who have all placed at the highest level.

The lightly raced Ninja and Gangsta Granny are others with potential to reach the top.

You might expect first-up horses to dominate the Missile, and you’d be right. Of the 37 winners since 1987, 27 have been first up including nine of the past 13.

Five of the past six winners have jumped from gates 1-3.