Melody Belle Targets Back to Back Grp 1's

Date: 21 Sep 2018

Melody Belle Targets Back to Back Grp 1's
The Informant reports:


Melody Belle (centre) will join elite company if she can add the Windsor Park Plate to her Tarzino Trophy success.




Returning to Hastings this weekend in career-best form, Melody Belle will attempt to join elite company in Saturday's Gr. 1 Windsor Park Plate.


Since the 1600-metre event joined the Hawke's Bay carnival's other two weight-for-age features at Group One level in 2005, only superstars Seachange (2006 and 2007) and Kawi (2016) have gone back-to-back in the races now known as the Tarzino Trophy and Windsor Park Plate.


Given her patchy three-year-old season, Melody Belle would have seemed two months ago to be an unlikely candidate for such an achievement. But this spring she has returned to, if not gone beyond, the high level she reached in her award-winning juvenile days.


After a last-gasp win over boom sprinter Julius first-up in the Gr. 2 Foxbridge Plate in August, she scored an emphatic half-length victory in the Tarzino Trophy two weeks ago.


Now her trainer Jamie Richards, back on his feet after five days in hospital with an abdominal problem, believes the star mare is ready for Saturday's 1600-metre test. Her only previous attempt at the distance was an unplaced finish in the Gr. 1 JJ Atkins in Brisbane as a two-year-old.


“She's done really well in the three weeks since the Tarzino,” said Richards, who was co-trainer alongside Stephen Autridge when Gingernuts won this race last year. “She looks good and we're very pleased with her. We've just kept her ticking along. Her gallop this (Tuesday) morning was excellent.


“The distance is a bit of a query, but I believe that if she's able to get the right run and not have to do too much during the race, it shouldn't be beyond her.”


Richards will also saddle the multiple Group Two winner Our Abbadean, who caught the eye with her fast-finishing third in the Tarzino.


“She hit the line really well in the Tarzino,” Richards said. “Hopefully we'll see a similar performance again this week, with a view to getting her up over 2000 metres in the Livamol.”

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