Ciaron Maher and David Eustace’s Pride Of Jenni made history during Melbourne Cup week, becoming the first horse in 24 years to win two races over the carnival and the six-year-old mare will target more riches in the Autumn.
A winner of both the Group 1 Empire Rose Stakes (1600m) and Group 1 Champions Mile (1600m), Pride Of Jenni will now target the All-Star Mile, to be run at Caulfield on March 16th this year and stable representative Jack Turnbull says the stable couldn’t be happier with her.
“Pride Of Jenni’s going tremendous, she’s trialled up well, her trackwork’s been really good. She carries residual through her last prep, she put on 40 kilos, even for a short break she appears to be a bit more mature mentally, she’s not as hard on herself,” Turnbull said.
A hard-going front-runner, Pride Of Jenni won her first trial at Cranbourne with Declan Bates aboard, who rode her to both feature wins in the Spring.
“Declan came out, trialled her and she’ll have another before we look to go racing but the end goal will be the All-Star Mile, it’ll be a matter of how she trials next as to where she goes first up but we’re really pleased with her and she’s going as good as we could hope for,” Turnbull said.
“She’s pretty hard on herself so we have to have her ready to go, at least one (run) obviously but whether it’s again back to the trials, if she breezes through her trials and her recovery’s good, we could give her a third and then go there after one run at 1400 (metres) but we’ll see how she preps up.”
Either the Group 1 C F Orr Stakes (1400m) or Group 1 Futurity Stakes (1400m) is the likely kick off point for Pride Of Jenni, who the stable believe has finally learnt to fully harness every bit of her talent.
“She’s probably lost more races with how she runs her races, it’s probably taken that level of maturity and strength for her to be able to burn the candle at both ends and sustain that speed, she’s more seasoned now… she’s tough, we gave her the opportunity to back up again and she proved us wrong,” Turnbull said.