Two-year-olds get a final chance at black type this Saturday in the Lightning Stakes at Morphettville, which pits the juveniles against the three-year-olds at weight-for-age.

Despite a five-kilo weight pull, the SA Lightning is no gimme for the youngsters, as recent results attest. The Price/Kent-trained filly Parlophone in 2020 was the last two-year-old to win the Lightning and one of only two in the past 16 years.

It wasn’t always this way. Two-year-olds won 13 of the first 16 runnings of the Lightning (1970-85), and two of the three three-year-olds who won it in that period had won it as juveniles the year before (Eastern Court in 1970-71 and Oenjay Star in 1979-80).

Three-year-olds have since caught up and now hold a 31-23 advantage over the race’s 54-year history.

Last year’s winner, La Danseuse Rouge, has had a solid if unspectacular season at four, placing in the Group 3 Northwood Plume and winning an open handicap at Caulfield last month (where 2022 Lightning winner Extremely Lucky was third).

The race does throw up the occasional star, however. 2016 winner Viddora and 2018 winner Nature Strip went on to win 11 Group 1s and an Everest between them.

All told this season, there have been 72 black-type races for two-year-olds (including those restricted to Magic Millions or Inglis graduates).

Broadsiding has led the way numerically, winning four of them. Bold Bastille, Bustling, Eneeza, Hayasugi, Manaal and Storm Boy have won three apiece.

Remarkably, 21 have fallen to progeny of first-season sires.

The leading stable in juvenile stakes races this season is Waterhouse/Bott (11 wins) from the Snowdens and James Cummings on five apiece. Ciaron Maher, Chris Waller, Moody/Coleman and the Hayes brothers have four each.

The top jockey is James McDonald (8) from Tommy Berry (7), Mark Zahra (6) and Jamie Kah (5).