Tavistock mares to the fore at Te Rapa

 
7 May 2017

It was Tavistock's girls that took centre stage over the weekend.

Galaxy Miss and Tomelilla stamped their mark at Te Rapa on Saturday with performances that suggested neither would be out of their depth in stakes company.

It's nice to see the fairer sex doing the job for Tavistock and keeping his run going," Cambridge Stud boss Sir Patrick said.

Tavistock's boys are continuing to tick over and provide winners but it was nice to see two of his daughters perform so well on the weekend."

Trained by Danica Guy at Matamata, Galaxy Miss was racing out of her grade but showed real tenacity as she outfinished former Hong Kong galloper Dancing Flames and Selfie to land the Rating 85 sprint and register her fifth win from 15 starts.

She's really strengthened up this time in and is just a different mare," Guy said.

She's run a good time and won really nicely. She showed she really wanted to win as she does try very, very hard."

It was an eye-catching return to winning form for the Murray Baker and Andrew Forsman-trained Tomelilla, who has been plagued by niggling foot issues over the past year.

She is a promising type but we've had an interrupted run with her due to a few problems with her feet," Forsman said.

She seems to have come right and was always going to be a big improver off her last run where she finished a nice fourth at Ellerslie. It was a good effort to get the win on Saturday as it was a handy line-up and she was wide for a fair part of the early stages of the race.

She has a nice turn of foot and showed plenty of grit to hold them off. At this stage, she seems suited to a mile so we will look around and see what else is coming up over the next few weeks."

While those two mares provided the highlight of Tavistock's weekend, a two-year-old colt by the sire made an impressive winning debut at Pakenham on Sunday.

The Trent Busuttin and Natalie Young-trained Salsamor scored by three-quarters of a length and looked an exciting three-year-old prospect in the making.

During the week, Tavistock's four-year-old son My Blessing claimed his second win in Hong Kong in his past four starts when he claimed a 1800m class five event for trainer Dennis Yip at Happy Valley.

At Riccarton on Saturday, Tavistock mare Lin was unable to complete her hat-trick of wins in the Great Autumn Handicap but she was far from disgraced in her biggest test to date and she should prove competitive wherever she goes dropping back to her own grade next start. - Staff writer, NZ Racing Desk