Embellish’s daughter in Oaks frame

Emerging filly Ultimate Habit credited our resident stallion Embellish with his fifth individual stakes winner when she triumphed in style at Trentham.

She produced a stirring finish from well back in the field to land the G2 Lowland Stakes and bookmakers reacted by slashing her G1 New Zealand Oaks odds to $11.

“We are definitely going to go to the Oaks on that, it is going to be a lot trickier going the other way around at Ellerslie, but she is such a laidback filly,” Patterson said.

Bred and part-owned by Isabelle Roddick of Rough Habit fame, Ultimate Habit placed in her first two starts before an encouraging effort to run sixth in the G3 Desert Gold Stakes.

“I wasn’t disappointed with her at all the other day, she just got stuck on the inside on a tricky track, and I knew she was a good filly,” Patterson said.

“The two runs at home before that, the way she got home she was unlucky so she should have won her maiden.”

Ultimate Habit settled well off a genuine pace at Trentham before picking up ground across the top and rounded off strongly in the run home.

“There was good speed and she cruised into it at the right time,” rider Craig Grylls said.

“She’s still a bit new and green, but she did it pretty comfortably in the end.”

Ultimate Habit is the first winner for the Bachelor Duke mare Queens Habit who is out of a half-sister to the multiple Group 1 winner and two-time New Zealand Horse of the Year Rough Habit.

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