News

Samaready returns with Group Three victory

31st Aug 2013

Sky Racing - Matthew Toogood - Saturday, 31 August 2013

Mick Price is eyeing another Group One with Samaready after the star mare made a winning comeback at Caulfield on Saturday.

The 2012 Group One Blue Diamond winner missed a year of racing because of a torn muscle across her hind quarter, but showed she had lost none of her ability with a first-up win in the Group Three Theshark.com.au Stakes (1100m).

Price said he had been "too scared" to work Samaready too hard on the training track ahead of her return and was relieved to see the four-year-old handle the pressure of a race.

"It's onwards and upwards from here," he said.

"She's a good filly and it was good to see her hit the line one hundred per cent."

On the back of her pleasing return, Price said he would look to weight-for-age sprints at Moonee Valley, starting with the Group Two McEwen Stakes in two weeks and then the Group One Moir Stakes (1200m) on September 27.

Samaready took her record to five wins from seven starts.

Jockey Craig Newitt had Samaready, the $5.50 favourite, parked fourth in a solidly run race and when he asked the mare to make her run she responded to defeat Chiaramonte ($9) by 1-1/4 lengths with Anise ($17) a long neck away third.

"It's very satisfying and it's relief," Newitt said.

"These horses don't come along very often. She dominated as a two-year-old and I always thought she would be a better three-year-old.

"Then we never really got to see her as a three-year-old."

Samaready (More Than Ready-Samar) was purchased by Belmont Bloodstock for $150,000 from the draft of Vinery Stud at the 2011 Inglis Australian Easter Yearling Sale