News

Tale Of Love Takes $50K Provincial Bonus

18th Feb 2009

Tale Of The Cat filly Tale Of Love became the first horse to pick up one of the Inglis $50,000 Provincial bonuses when justifying her favouritism tag at Mornington today.

In an all Inglis trifecta, TALE OF LOVE ($60,000 2008 Premier, 2f Tale Of The Cat- Djel d'Amour) beat $44,000 Classic graduate Miss Twoicee and Helpmann, a $50,000 Melbourne Premier purchase.

This is the first time a $50,000 Provincial Bonus has been won as part of the $2.5M Inglis Race Series and follows the $100,000 bonus awarded to the Gary Portelli trained Delago Bolt for his win at Rosehill earlier this month.

The filly is now likely to head to the $250,000 Inglis Premier at Caulfield on February 28 and trainer Robert Smerdon was thrilled to pick up today’s bonus money, which came on top of the $10,400 first prizemoney.

“You add that to the prizemoney ... $60,000 nett to the winner and it’s like winning a $100,000 race somewhere, so it’s a terrific incentive,” Smerdon said on TVN.

“(She’s) heading towards the Inglis (Premier) Saturday week at Caulfield 1200m – it wasn’t ideal coming back to 1000m today and we had a couple of little concerns about the drop back in distance, but certainly it was a race worth having a crack at.”

The Inglis Melbourne Premier Sale will be held at Oaklands over four sessions from March 1-4, with 780 quality yearlings catalogued for sale.

All Sirecam Videos for the sale are now on-line.

Premier graduates have won 20 stakes races this season and include top two-year-olds Rostova and Reward For Effort, who both go for Group 1 glory in Saturday’s $1M Blue Diamond Stakes.

Tale Of Love’s sire Tale Of The Cat, who has second favourite Real Saga in the Blue Diamond, is represented by 17 yearlings at Premier.