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Renalot’s ($5 on TAB) racing career has taken some twists and turns to get to where she is as one of the favourites for the $75,000 Spanline Orange Cup (2100m) on Friday.

The five-year-old has proven to be a bargain for the large group that leases her, but the real story lies in how she came to be with her trainer Roy McCabe at Bathurst.

Renalot (Clayton Gallagher) returns after winning at Hawkesbury. Image by Bradley Photographers

If she can win the feature trace it will cap off an upward spiral for Renalot and McCabe since he took over her training.

“She went through the broodmare sales and didn’t reach the reserve price so I got her on a 12-month lease,” McCabe said.

“The people who lease her are having a great time, but the lease expires at the end of May so at this stage we will only have a couple of more starts with her.”

McCabe is hopeful of renegotiating the lease if Renalot’s owners are keen to continue and the mare’s form warrants more racing before she is retired.

“She is only a five-year-old mare and we have had some wasted time with her. She spent six months in the paddock resting and then I wanted to run her in the Country Championships but she wasn’t qualified,” he said.

“I aimed her up for some races and she was able to win at her second start for me at Hawkesbury then two starts back she won the Orange Cup prelude.

“I did want to target the Orange Cup and this will be my first starter as a trainer in the race.

“She has been great for the stable. She was my first provincial winner and now if she races up to what she has been doing she should go well on Friday.”

Renalot will have the services of top jockey Jay Ford and McCabe expects his hope to race in front or right on the speed at her first test at the distance. That is the only query he has with Renalot if there is one at all.

“She has shown she should get the distance the way she has been going,” he added. “I don’t mind if she rolls forward and takes up the running and leads.

“On breeding, she should run the distance, but that isn’t the case with every horse.”

Renalot, with Ford in the saddle, ran second at Wyong before surging through the soft track conditions to win the cup prelude before running third in the Wellington Cup with Clayton Gallagher aboard.

Those starts were over 1600 and 1700m so with an extra 400m to cover it is unknown territory for Renalot. McCabe hopes to have another one or two starts after the Orange Cup with Renalot with one of those possibly being the Wagga Cup on May 7.

Meanwhile, trainer Peter Stanley won’t worry either way if Not Negotiating ($26) or The Long Run ($31) win the Cup. Not Negotiating is coming off a Country Championships campaign, while The Long Run hasn’t raced for three weeks since finishing last in the Muswellbrook Cup.

Stanley’s daughter Ashleigh will ride Not Negotiating, while The Long Run will have the services of Kath Bell-Pitomac: “They are both chances in a pretty even race,” he suggested.

Topweight Dylan’s Romance ($5) is the class factor in the Cup with over $400,000 in earnings and 11 wins to his name. He finished second (Renalot, was third) in the Wellington Cup, and will carry between 3kg to 6kg extra weight than his rivals.

With the big weight of 61kg Dylan’s Romance will need to race at least as well as his last effort when he carried 57kg. His trainer Marc Conners ran third in the Orange Cup last year with Celtic Love.

The other feature races at Orange are the $50,000 Angullong Country Magic Benchmark 58 (1600m) and the $40,000 On-Trac Ag Maiden (1280m). The eight-race program offers $325,000 in prizemoney with the track presently rated as a Good 4.

View the final fields with full form & race replays for Orange here