For the trainer it was revenge, for the jockey it resurrected a wave of nostalgia and for the owners it raised the hope they might just have the next Black Caviar.
Samaready, a filly trained by Mick Price, ridden by Craig Newitt and part-owned by Vinery Stud, won Victoria’s premier juvenile race, the Blue Diamond Stakes, as though she was already a champion.
Having only her third start, Samaready won the $1 million race with class, courage and an incredible burst of speed to score by an ever-widening three lengths.
The win convinced Price to now set her for the world’s richest two-year-old race, the $3.5 million Golden Slipper Stakes at Rosehill on April 7.
But first of all, Price wants to savour a victory he believes should be his second in the Blue Diamond.
“I’m pretty pleased to be celebrating my first Blue Diamond win but I’d like to be standing here saying I’ve won two of them,” Price said.
Nine years ago Price trained the first past the post Roedean, only to have the race taken from him two weeks later after tests on a swab taken from the filly revealed traces of a banned drug.
It was concluded that Roedean had been treated with an ointment which she had licked from her leg, leading to the positive test.
“They are the rules, but it was hard to take,” Price said.
For Newitt, the win revived memories of Blue Diamond day three years ago – a day he regards as the worst of his life.
Newitt arrived at Caulfield that afternoon in 2009 with high hopes of landing a big winner.
But soon after he received the news his father had been killed in a car accident.
Rather than relinquish his rides, Newitt did what he believed his father would have wanted and rode, finishing a close second in the Group One Futurity Stakes on the Price-trained Light Fantastic.
“That day is a bit of a blur,” Newitt said.
“I’ll just replace it with this one.”
Samaready has now won her only three starts, making her a valuable breeding proposition for her owners and sparking the dream that she might follow on the trail of a horse she sees almost every morning.
Price and Black Caviar’s trainer Peter Moody are friends, neighbours and rivals.
Now they share the common bond of having a star filly in their stables.
“I’d like to think there was a similarity between the horses,” Price said.
“There isn’t, but you can only hope.”
