Midnight Reigns Breaks Maiden Convincingly
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Three year old filly Midnight Reigns lined up as favourite, both with
the bookmakers and on the tote, in the 1300m Maiden race on Saturday at
Newcastle and
maintained the lead to triumph in good style.
We were very excited to have Midnight Reigns break her maiden - as well as being very deserving of the win, we continued to be balloted out of these maiden events, as the number of nominations are enormous!
Five of her runs prior to this (bar a second placing in her most recent trial) were all third placings, including two of her three two year old starts, so as you can imagine, this was very well received by her great group of owners.
Having drawn a good starting position in barrier 2 and having tirelessly studied the form, we were quietly confident heading into the event. She was well primed for the race, coming off the back of an eye catching effort where she was severely hindered in the early stages of the run by the eventual second place getter, who won her maiden well at Canterbury on Friday night! Midnight Reigns ended up flying around the pack in the home straight when no other horse on the day made ground. Very impressive.
The strength of this effort was enough for John to earmark the daughter of Danehill's champion racehorse, Holy Roman Emperor, for the richest maiden in Australia, the BMW 'M5' Magic Millions Maiden on the 14th of January, being part of the lucrative Gold Coast Carnival meeting. In preparation we trialled her at Randwick and sat quietly throughout the race and when we thought she couldn't possibly do a thing to get out of a sticky spot she pushed through the pack and flew home in the very late stages to be second by a neck. As it happened though, we were balloted out of the Gold Coast event. It did provide a great stepping stone to our Newcastle win where she maintained a a good position to find a break rounding the turn and get into the lead in strong fashion.
Luckily for us, Midnight Reigns is looking like she'll get over some ground and there are plenty of good races for fillies and mares over 1600m!
Congratulations to all owners!